Bibtex: import book with field "pages"

mblunk

I'm asking myself: it's not be the same thing with field "pages" when i export to bibtex then happend with CSL style when the field "pages" are for both "book" and "journal article".

I resume:

When i export a book to bibtex:
@book{__1980,
address = {М},
title = {Контекстная Семантика},
lccn = {801.541.2},
publisher = {Наука},
author = {Геннадий Владимирович Колшанский},
year = {1980},
keywords = {Семасиология},
pages = {149}
}

When i export a journal article:
@article{__1988,
title = {Стратегии понимания связного текста},
volume = {23},
journal = {Новое в зарубежной лингвистике: Когнитивные аспекты языка},
author = {Т А Дейк and В Кинч},
year = {1988},
pages = {153—211}
}

I guess for book it's should be:
@book{__1980,
address = {М},
title = {Контекстная Семантика},
lccn = {801.541.2},
publisher = {Наука},
author = {Геннадий Владимирович Колшанский},
year = {1980},
keywords = {Семасиология},
numpages = {149} <----////
}

Am i wrong? Or it's no so important like for CSL style?

I'm just guessing, i'm not familiar with bibtex format.

mblunk

And, also, i think it's a problem when i import the "chapter of a book" or "раздел книги" im my locale:

It's appearing like this:
@incollection{__1968,
address = {М},
title = {Исповедь},
booktitle = {Полное Собрание Сочинений: Худож. Произведения: В 25 Т},
publisher = {Наука},
author = {Максим Горький},
year = {1968}
}

And i think it's should be:
@inbook{__1968, <--------------------------------///////////////
address = {М},
title = {Исповедь},
booktitle = {Полное Собрание Сочинений: Худож. Произведения: В 25 Т},
publisher = {Наука},
author = {Максим Горький},
year = {1968}
}

noksagt

numpages is not a standard bibtex field. I think there are some citation styles that treat pages in a book as the total number of pages & the Wikipedia article on BibTeX use the pages field for this purpose (though I agree that is may be up for debate & the export of the # of pages field is probably a carry-over from an older database schema).

Incollection was a deliberate decision & isn't that debatable: inbook doesn't usually have a title for the section & only has a booktitle.

dstillman

I enabled the export of numPages as BibTeX 'pages' the other day in response to another post of mblunk's. I based that solely on what Wikipedia had.

noksagt

Yeah, that addition is somewhat questionable & we probably shouldn't rely on it if that is the only source.

Most .bst style files will handle this fine (because their citation for the book type exclude pages), but some do handle it poorly. The beebe styles treat the field as citing specific pages, for example. If there are other common examples of this, perhaps the total number of pages should be either moved or removed from bibtex output. It should probably not be moved to "numpages:" APS and IOP use that to mean something else.

There aren't many popular .bst styles that use "pages" in a book to denote the total number of pages. The only one I'm aware of is jurabib. But that also allows "totalpages." This might be a possible field to move it to, but I don't think this field is used by any other style. BibLaTeX uses "pagetotal" for this, but I don't know anything else that uses this either.

mblunk

I just reported that. :) I don't realise it was create a lot of discussion. If it's not important then it's ok. I think if bibtex don't have an official info about fields in data it's ok if zotero use "pages" for both. The most important the developers knows it. :)