Refer (software)
Encyclopedia
refer is a program for managing bibliographic references,
and citing them in troff
documents.
It is implemented as a troff preprocessor
.
refer was written by Mike E. Lesk
at Bell Laboratories
in or before 1978,
and is now available as part of most Unix-like
operating systems.
A free reimplementation exists as part of the groff
package.
refer works with a reference file, a text file where the author
lists works to which she might want to refer to.
One such reference (to an article in a journal in this case)
might look like:
%A Brian W. Kernighan
%A Lorinda L. Cherry
%T A System for Typesetting Mathematics
%J J. Comm. ACM
%V 18
%N 3
%D March 1978
%P 151-157
%K eqn
The author then can refer to it in her troff document by listing keywords
which uniquely match this reference:
.[
kernighan cherry eqn
.]
refer sees little use today, primarily because troff itself is not used much for
longer technical writing that might need software support for
reference and citation management.
and citing them in troff
Troff
troff is a document processing system developed by AT&T for the Unix operating system.-History:troff can trace its origins back to a text formatting program called RUNOFF, written by Jerome H. Saltzer for MIT's CTSS operating system in the mid-1960s...
documents.
It is implemented as a troff preprocessor
Preprocessor
In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by some subsequent programs like compilers...
.
refer was written by Mike E. Lesk
Mike Lesk
Michael E. Lesk is a computer programmer.In the 1960s, Michael Lesk worked for the SMART Information Retrieval System project, wrote much of its retrieval code and did many of the retrieval experiments, as well as obtaining a PhD in Chemical Physics....
at Bell Laboratories
in or before 1978,
and is now available as part of most Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems.
A free reimplementation exists as part of the groff
Groff (software)
Groff is the GNU replacement for the troff and nroff text formatters. It is an original implementation written primarily in C++ by James Clark and is modeled after ditroff, including many extensions. The first version, 0.3.1, was released June 1990. The first stable version, 1.04, was announced in...
package.
refer works with a reference file, a text file where the author
lists works to which she might want to refer to.
One such reference (to an article in a journal in this case)
might look like:
%A Brian W. Kernighan
%A Lorinda L. Cherry
%T A System for Typesetting Mathematics
%J J. Comm. ACM
%V 18
%N 3
%D March 1978
%P 151-157
%K eqn
The author then can refer to it in her troff document by listing keywords
which uniquely match this reference:
.[
kernighan cherry eqn
.]
refer sees little use today, primarily because troff itself is not used much for
longer technical writing that might need software support for
reference and citation management.
External links
- Some Applications of Inverted Indexes on the UNIX System (PostScriptPostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
) - AIX man page for refer(1)