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\centerline{\bf \TeX89\ looks at \LaTeXbf\ tools}
\smallskip\noindent
Several discussion and `birds of a feather'  groups were organised at the
Karlsruhe \TeX89 meeting. Our discussion group considered indexing and
bibliographies.  We were in fair  agreement over indexing.  At the moment
neither |makeindex| nor |makeidx|  works on a PC for a document long enough to
need an index: PC versions are  needed.  Other desirable enhancements include:
international language support  (such as \"a if |german.sty| has been used);
options to specify how to alphabetize  in languages where there is more than one
convention (for example, there are three  possible positions for \"a in German);
certain constants to be made bigger; user's  choice of delimiter characters, as
with |\verb|.  Other complaints apply more  generally to software being passed
around the \TeX\ community: it should be  written in lines of no more than 72
characters (because of email problems);  only a very standard subset of C should
be used; the authors should be  accessible.  A wish-list was prepared, which
will be sent to the authors of  |makeindex| and |makeidx| if we can find them.

There was much less consensus over what is currently possible or easy in 
\BiBTeX\ and what are reasonable enhancements to ask for.  Clearly, some people 
like programming in reverse Polish while others seem to find it extraordinarily 
difficult.  We did agree that it would be useful to have matters as the ordering 
of the items, the type of key used, the ordering of words within the items, and 
the language used for words like `edition', could be easily changed 
independently.  International language support is also needed.

Although we agreed that all standard fields should be pre-declared in standard 
\BiBTeX, so that everyone uses them in the same way, we did not agree on what 
we thought was standard.  Each of the following was supported by at least one 
person in the group: ISBN number; price of book; title of author, such as `Dr'
or  `S J'; `contribution to discussion of Important Paper X by J Smith' -- but
are any  of these really that standard?  This led on to a discussion of whether
it was  really sensible to use \BiBTeX\ as a database, in which case it needs a
front end to  help secretaries input the entries (Anne Br\"uggemann-Klein has
written one), or  whether it is better to use an established database and get it
to write |.bib| files  (my preference).

Our course, getting \BiBTeX\ to be all things to all people also involves making 
|\cite| more flexible.  For some journals, |\cite| needs to put the title in a
footnote  on the first occurrence only; for others, it must put the author(s)
and year in  the text, but with punctuation depending on whether one is already
inside  parentheses; for yet others, if a book is cited only once the cited page 
number(s) must go in the bibliography rather than the text.  Is it reasonable to 
be able to expect any usable program to be able to do all this?  To my mind, 
having an editable |.bbl| file is a huge plus.

Anne Br\"uggemann-Klein agreed to compile a wish-list and send it to Oren 
Patashnik before he finishes his current work on \BiBTeX.  I hope we do not give 
the impression that we are not grateful for what has already been done.  
Although many people in the group sounded indignant that \BiBTeX\ would not 
do exactly what they wanted, it seems to me to be such an improvement over 
both `doing it yourself' (Lamport, Section 4.3.1) and using generic commands 
like |\writer| and |\paper|, defined in each style-file (cf. Spivak, Appendix B)
that  I, for one, am simply delighted that I have \BiBTeX.

\rightline{\sl Rosemary Bailey}
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