Re: How to cite the Emacs and Calc manuals?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

On 2014-12-29, at 06:04, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> as in the subject. (I want to offer some BSc thesis
>> topics based on Emacs Calc, and I am required by my
>> faculty to give not only the proposed title, but also
>> some literature on the subject.)
>
> Do you cite that differently from other books?

Nope.  But:

- what is the author?  It says on the first page: "This manual, also
  written (mostly) by Dave Gillespie [...]" - so is it "Dave Gillespie"
  or "Dave Gillespie et al." or what?
- what is the year of publication?  It says on the first page:
  "Copyright (C) 1990-1991, 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc." -
  so is it 2013?
- what is the publisher?  I guess FSF, but they don't have it in their
  dead trees web page shop.
- not to mention the place of publishing (usually it's the name of a
  city).

So for me, it is not at all clear.

> I know you know Biblatex:
>
>     @Book{dyson,
>     author = {Peter Dyson},
>     title = {The Unix Desk Reference: The hu.man Pages},
>     publisher = {SYBEX},
>     year = 1996,
>     ISBN = {0-7821-1658-2}}

Well, I don't know very much about Biblatex, but an entry like that
would solve my problem, of course.  (Personally, I use amsrefs most of
the time.)

> By the way, I think it was gnuplot: the first time you
> use it it outputs an entry just like that how to cite
> it in a paper!
>
> While I think that is a bit silly, software COULD come
> with an option, e.g. --cite so you could output it
> that way (and/or it could be mentioned in the man
> page). Why not? It is easy to do and some people would
> actually use it as well.

+1.  At least the manuals (especially huge, well-written manuals like
the Calc's one) could contain information like that.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University