[Python-Dev] Official citation for Python (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Mon Sep 10 15:24:03 EDT 2018

On Sun, 9 Sep 2018 at 20:55 Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

On 9/9/2018 11:39 PM, Jacqueline Kazil wrote: > Terry -- For clarification, the format question was not a style > question. It was a reference to the one versus many that I wrote in the > explainer.

I don't know what you mean by this. > Yes... there are many prescribed formats already. That is the easy part. Different publications use different citation formats. We cannot dictate which format an author or publication uses. We could, and I think should, suggest the content of the different fields that go into the various formats. And we could give examples of citing, say, the Reference Manual, in the most common formats.

What we can suggest, though, is what the information should be and that's what Jackie is initially asking about, i.e. do we want a single reference for the language that is version-agnostic or one for each Python release?

My vote is a single reference and leave it up to the person referencing to clarify the version they are using. Seems the simplest to maintain long-term.

-Brett

> On Sun, Sep 9, 2018 at 11:33 PM Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu_ _> <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>> wrote: > > On 9/9/2018 3:43 PM, Jacqueline Kazil wrote: > > <http:///>The PSF has received a few inquiries asking the question — > > “How do I cite Python?”So, I am reaching out to you all to figure > this out. > > > > (For those that don’t know my background, I have been in academia > for a > > bit as a Ph.D student and have worked at the Library of Congress > writing > > code to process Marc records > <https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/>, > > among other things.) > > > > IMHO the citation for Python should be decided upon by the Python > > developers and should live somewhere on the site. The PSF is the publisher. It seems that you might be more competent to make some of the decisions than are we developers, who have mostly left academia some time ago. > > Two questions to be answered… > > > > 1. What format should it take? > > There are by now formats for citing web documents. I presume style > guides now include such. Try a current version of the Chicago > Manual of > Style. (not sure of exact title). I will ask a university professor > who should know more than I. > > > 2. Where does it live on the site? > > On https://bugs.python.org/issue26597, I suggested the Copyright page. To make the answer more visible, > I now think a link to 'Citing these Documents' on > https://docs.python.org/3/ > would be even better. tjr

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