While I'm at it, here's a followup to the "date" patch that adds a
little function to shorten author names, and uses it for the "plain"
entry output.

This is a simple function ATM; it only strips given names from
personal names, and is only used on the "plain" entry output.

But it should be easily extended to handle, for example, initializing
given names.

I'm still waiting to hear back from FSF, but I think the LOC should be
small enough?

Bruce

PS - I assume here it's better as a separate thread rather than
replying to the earlier one; is that correct?