Re: FW: [jats-list] Element for wrapping a group of xref elements

[Alf Eaton <eaton.alf@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 24 January 2013 16:26, Kaveh Bazargan <kaveh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> So in a very generic terminology, a citation to a reference should be:
>
> <reference>ref1, ref2, ref3, ref19, ref22, ref23, ref24</reference>
>
> with no regard for what the rendered output should look like.

That's essentially the same as <xref rid="ref1 ref2 ref3 ref19 ref22
ref23 ref24"/> - which would be ideal, but the problem is that most of
the time we're marking up cross-references in text that already
contains punctuation, e.g.
(<xref rid="ref1">Smith, 1999</xref>; <xref rid="ref2">Jones, 2003</xref>)

To be able to reformat those references using numeric reference labels
instead of author-year, there has to be some way of knowing where the
punctuation starts and ends, so either:

<xref rid="ref1 ref2">(Smith, 1999; Jones, 2003)</xref>
<=>
<xref rid="ref1 ref2">1,2</xref>

or

<xref-group>(<xref rid="ref1">Smith, 1999</xref>; <xref
rid="ref2">Jones, 2003</xref>)</xref-group>
<=>
<xref-group><xref rid="ref1">1</xref>,<xref rid="ref2">2</xref></xref-group>

I'm not sure which I prefer, but if it's a requirement that each
individual reference is marked up, then I think there's definitely a
use for an xref-group
element to mark the start and end of the group of references.

Alf