Cite Format

Cite Format is an intuitive way of accurately and exhaustively describing the arrangement of source information within citations. Here's an example APA book format:
``
^AUTHOR. (YEAR). TITLE (TRANSLATOR,+Trans.) . EDITOR,+Ed(s). LOCATION: PUBLISHER.
`

This defines output citations of the form:

Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax.* Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1969). Genealogy of Morals* (Walter Kaufmann, Trans.). Random House.

Syntax

There are 5 syntactic categories:

1. boundaries: spaces ( ) and backslashes ( \ )
1. modifiers: carets ( ^ ), tildes ( ~ ), and bars ( | )
1. fields: uppercase strings of 3+ uppercase letters ( AUTHOR ), plus modifiers
1. punctuation: any combination of: ,.:[]()"'
1. extras: arbitrary strings, with whitespace represented by plus ( + ) symbols

There are 3 rules of composition:

1. If no boundary intervenes among n elements, they're attached.
1. Fields do not attach to one other.
1. Modifiers must attach to a field.

$3

An element is said to be attached to a field if no boundaries intervene between the field and the element. In the below, the extras (HTML tags) and the punctuation are attached to the TITLE field:

`
(TITLE).
`

In the next case, the parentheses attach to the ISSUE field, and not to the VOLUME or PAGENUMBERS fields, since a backslash (a boundary) intervenes on the left, and a space (a boundary) intervenes on the right.

`
VOLUME\(ISSUE). PAGENUMBERS.
`

Semantics

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Fields are replaced with strings; AUTHOR becomes Noam Chomsky.

If a caret appears at the left edge of a name field†, the (alphabetically) first name will appear inverted. So, ^AUTHOR becomes Chomsky, Noam.

If a tilde appears at the left edge of a name field†, all first names will be dropped, and if more than 2 names, names 2+ will be replaced by et al.

The bar modifier turns n fields into a single disjoint field, in which the leftmost non-empty value replaces the whole field. So AUTHOR|EDITOR will be replaced by the value of AUTHOR if defined, or else with the value of EDITOR.


† Name fields are: AUTHOR(S), EDITOR(S), TRANSLATOR(S), CONTRIBUTOR(S), DIRECTOR(S), COMPOSER(S), and PERFORMER(S).


$3

Elements attached to an empty field are dropped. So then, if FIELDA evaluates as 'Chomsky', and FIELDB evaluates as empty:

`py


Attached period

FIELDA FIELDB. # = 'Chomsky'

Un-attached period

FIELDA FIELDB . # = 'Chomsky.'
`
In the first case, the attached period vanishes because FIELDB is empty, while in the second case, the un-attached period remains. The same applies for extras.

Punctuation filter

The output will satisfy the following:
* Empty enclosing punctuation ( "" '' () [] ) is dropped.
* Bad periods ( .. (. [. ) are dropped.
* Bad commas ( ,, ,. (, [, :, ,) ,] ) are dropped.
* Bad colons ( :: :. (: [: ,: :) :]` ) are dropped.