BabbleNewt: A Simplified, Consistent, and Interoperable Reference Citation Format for Bibliographic Metadata *

Of the diverse bibliographic metadata formats, BibTeX and BibLaTeX have been dominant across mathematics, computing, and engineering due to their use with the TeX and LaTeX typesetting compilers. Despite success in these fields as well as the publishing industry, both BibTeX and BibLaTeX have some deficiencies, notably inconsistencies in the format definitions and use of macros, pseudo-records, programs and processing methods across different software implementations and installations. These inconsistencies contribute to bibliography parsing and document typesetting errors especially problematic with difficult debugging for large bibliography files. A subproject within the PORTAL-DOORS Project (PDP), the BabbleNewt Project aims to address these concerns by designing a set of formats which iterate on the original BibTeX and BibLaTeX formats while enabling easy conversion between them and a newly designed simplified, consistent, and interoperable format called BabbleNewt. The set of related formats implemented for bibliography processors by PDP BabbleNewt includes two formats PdpBibtex and PdpBiblatex corresponding to the original BibTeX and BibLaTeX, two generalized transition formats PdpBibtexgen and PdpBiblatexgen, and the novel format PdpBabblenewt.