On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, John C Klensin wrote: > This is not just "a tradition", it is an approved form in some > style manuals. It is most often used along with > [AUTHyyS]-type references, where "AUTH" is two or four letters > from the first author's name, yy are a two-digit year, and S > is "a"..."z" if there are more than one reference for the same > author, or for an author with the same (last) name. One of > the controversies about the method (controversy == different > sources make different recommendations) is whether, say two > articles, one each by Joe Jones and Fred Jones, should be > cited as [JONE03a] and [JONE03b] or whether they should > preferentially appear as [JONJ03] and [JONF03]. > > LastName1, initials1, initials2 LastName2, ... > form is preferred to > initials1 LastName1, initials2 LastName2, ... > because it is easier for the reader to identify the author > name and match it to the above referencing variants. And > those manuals tend to prefer "Initials Lastname" (more > generally, having names appear in their natural order) in the > absence of other considerations because it is really nice to > not have ambiguity about what people are really called (those > Asian names that are normally written with the family name > first appear in natural order in that scheme, without the key > commas). > > The RFC Editor's real "tradition", as I understand it, has > been to permit any reasonable reference form to be used, as > long as it is applied consistently. I am personally > sympathetic to that tradition; I think an argument for forcing > a single format should focus clearly on the method to be > chosen and why it represents an improvement. And, in doing > so, please remember those Asian and Spanish-style names. It seems I was not clear enough and you misinterpreted my point. Let try to clarify, > >> [10] Eastlake, D. and E. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS > >> Names", RFC 2606, June 1999. > >> ==> hopefully this isn't the reference practise, should be > >> s/E. Panitz/Panitz, E./, right? I have a problem of writing the author list as "Eastlake, D., and E. Panitz", rather than "Eastlake, D., and Panitz, E." -- Pekka Savola "You each name yourselves king, yet the Netcore Oy kingdom bleeds." Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings