The Hayagriva YAML file format enables you to feed a collection of literature items into Hayagriva. It is built on the YAML standard. This documentation starts with a basic introduction with examples into the format, explains how to represent several types of literature with parents, and then explores all the possible fields and data types. An example file covering many potential use cases can be found in the test directory of the repository.
In technical terms, a Hayagriva file is a YAML document that contains a single mapping of mappings. Or, in simpler terms: Every literature item needs to be identifiable by some name (the key) and have some properties that describe it (the fields). Suppose a file like this:
harry:
type: Book
title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
author: Rowling, J. K.
volume: 5
page-total: 768
date: 2003-06-21
electronic:
type: Web
title: Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music
serial-number: v2.5
author: Ishkur
url: http://www.techno.org/electronic-music-guide/You can see that it refers to two items: The fifth volume of the Harry Potter books (key: harry) and a web page called "Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music" (key: electronic). The key always comes first and is followed by a colon. Below the key, indented, you can find one field on each line: They start with the field name, then a colon, and then the field value.
Sometimes, this value can be more complex than just some text after the colon. If you have an article that was authored by multiple people, its author field can look like this instead:
author: ["Omarova, Saule", "Steele, Graham"]Or it could also be this:
author:
- Omarova, Saule
- Steele, GrahamThe author field can be an array (a list of values) to account for media with more than one creator. YAML has two ways to represent these lists: The former, compact, way where you wrap your list in square braces and the latter, more verbose way where you put each author on their own indented line and precede them with a hyphen so that it looks like a bullet list. Since in the compact form both list items and authors' first and last names are separated by commas you have to wrap the names of individual authors in double-quotes.
Sometimes, fields accept composite data. If, for example, you would want to save an access date for an URL for your bibliography, you would need the url field to accept that. This is accomplished like this:
url:
value: http://www.techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
date: 2020-11-30There is also a more compact form of this that might look familiar if you know JSON:
url: { value: http://www.techno.org/electronic-music-guide/, date: 2020-11-30 }By now, you must surely think that there must be an abundance of fields to represent all the possible information that could be attached to any piece of literature: For example, an article could have been published in an anthology whose title you would want to save, and that anthology belongs to a series that has a title itself... For this, you would already need three different title-fields? Hayagriva's data model was engineered to prevent this kind of field bloat, read the next section to learn how to represent various literature.
Hayagriva aims to keep the number of fields it uses small to make the format easier to memorize and therefore write without consulting the documentation. Other contemporary literature management file formats like RIS and BibLaTeX use many fields to account for every kind of information that could be attached to some piece of media.
We instead use the concept of parents: Many pieces of literature are published within other media (e. g. articles can appear in newspapers, blogs, periodicals, ...), and when each of these items is regarded isolatedly and without consideration for that publication hierarchy, there are substantially fewer fields that could apply.
How does this look in practice? An article in a scientific journal could look like this:
kinetics:
type: Article
title: Kinetics and luminescence of the excitations of a nonequilibrium polariton condensate
author: ["Doan, T. D.", "Tran Thoai, D. B.", "Haug, Hartmut"]
serial-number:
doi: "10.1103/PhysRevB.102.165126"
page-range: 165126-165139
date: 2020-10-14
parent:
type: Periodical
title: Physical Review B
volume: 102
issue: 16
publisher: American Physical SocietyThis means that the article was published in issue 16, volume 102 of the journal "Physical Review B". Notice that the title field is in use for both the article and its parent - every field is available for both top-level use and all parents.
To specify parent information, write the parent field name and a colon and then put all fields for that parent on indented lines below.
The line type: Periodical could also have been omitted since each entry type has the notion of a default parent type, which is the type that the parents will have if they do not have a type field.
Sometimes, media is published in multiple ways, i. e. one parent would not provide the full picture. Multiple parents are possible to deal with these cases:
wwdc-network:
type: Article
author: ["Mehta, Jiten", "Kinnear, Eric"]
title: Boost Performance and Security with Modern Networking
date: 2020-06-26
parent:
- type: Conference
title: World Wide Developer Conference 2020
organization: Apple Inc.
location: Mountain View, CA
- type: Video
runtime: "00:13:42"
url: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10111/This entry describes a talk presented at a conference and for which a video is available from which the information was ultimately cited.
Just like the author field, parents can be a list. If it does, a hyphen indicates the start of a new parent.
Parents can also appear as standalone items and can have parents themselves. This is useful if you are working with articles from a journal that belongs to a series or cases like the one below:
plaque:
type: Misc
title: Informational plaque about Jacoby's 1967 photos
publisher:
name: Stiftung Reinbeckhallen
location: Berlin, Germany
date: 2020
parent:
type: Artwork
date: 1967
author: Jacoby, Max
parent:
type: Anthology
title: Bleibtreustraße
archive: Landesmuseum Koblenz
archive-location: Koblenz, GermanyThis plaque was created by a museum for a photo by Jacoby that belongs to a series that is usually archived at a different museum.
This section lists all possible fields and data types for them.
| Data type: | entry type |
| Description: | media type of the item, often determines the structure of references. |
| Example: | type: video |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | title of the item |
| Example: | title: "Rick Astley: How An Internet Joke Revived My Career" |
| Data type: | person / list of persons |
| Description: | persons primarily responsible for the creation of the item |
| Example: | author: ["Klocke, Iny", "Wohlrath, Elmar"] |
| Data type: | date |
| Description: | date at which the item was published |
| Example: | date: 1949-05 |
| Data type: | entry |
| Description: | item in which the item was published / to which it is strongly associated to |
| Example: | parent: |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | Abstract of the item (e.g. the abstract of a journal article). |
| Example: | abstract: The dominant sequence transduction models are based on complex... |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | Type, class, or subtype of the item (e.g. "Doctoral dissertation" for a PhD thesis; "NIH Publication" for an NIH technical report). Do not use for topical descriptions or categories (e.g. "adventure" for an adventure movie). |
| Example: | genre: Doctoral dissertation |
| Data type: | person / list of persons |
| Description: | persons responsible for selecting and revising the content of the item |
| Example: | editor: |
| Data type: | list of persons with role / list of lists of persons with role |
| Description: | persons involved with the item that do not fit author or editor |
| Example: | affiliated: |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | The number of the item in a library, institution, or collection. Use with archive. |
| Example: | call-number: "F16 D14" |
| Data type: | publisher |
| Description: | publisher of the item |
| Example: | publisher: Penguin Booksor publisher: |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | location at which an entry is physically located or took place. For the location where an item was published, see publisher. |
| Example: | location: Lahore, Pakistan |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | Organization at/for which the item was produced |
| Example: | organization: Technische Universität Berlin |
| Data type: | numeric or string |
| Description: | For an item whose parent has multiple issues, indicates the position in the issue sequence. Also used to indicate the episode number for TV. |
| Example: | issue: 5 |
| Data type: | numeric or string |
| Description: | For an item whose parent has multiple volumes/parts/seasons ... of which this item is one |
| Example: | volume: 2-3 |
| Data type: | numeric |
| Description: | Total number of volumes/parts/seasons this item consists of |
| Example: | volume-total: 12 |
| Data type: | numeric or string |
| Description: | published version of an item |
| Example: | edition: expanded and revised edition |
| Data type: | numeric or string |
| Description: | the range of pages within the parent this item occupies |
| Example: | page-range: 812-847 |
| Data type: | numeric |
| Description: | total number of pages the item has |
| Example: | page-total: 1103 |
| Data type: | timestamp range |
| Description: | the time range within the parent this item starts and ends at |
| Example: | time-range: 00:57-06:21 |
| Data type: | timestamp |
| Description: | total runtime of the item |
| Example: | runtime: 01:42:21,802 |
| Data type: | url |
| Description: | canonical public URL of the item, can have access date |
| Example: | url: { value: https://www.reddit.com/r/AccidentalRenaissance/comments/er1uxd/japanese_opposition_members_trying_to_block_the/, date: 2020-12-29 } |
| Data type: | string or dictionary of strings |
| Description: | Any serial number, including article numbers. If you have serial numbers of well-known schemes like doi, you should put them into the serial number as a dictionary like in the second example. Hayagriva will recognize and specially treat doi, isbn issn, pmid, pmcid, and arxiv. You can also include serial for the serial number when you provide other formats as well. |
| Example: | serial-number: 2003.13722 or serial-number: |
| Data type: | unicode language identifier |
| Description: | language of the item |
| Example: | language: zh-Hans |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | name of the institution/collection where the item is kept |
| Example: | archive: National Library of New Zealand |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | location of the institution/collection where the item is kept |
| Example: | archive-location: Wellington, New Zealand |
| Data type: | formattable string |
| Description: | short markup, decoration, or annotation to the item (e.g., to indicate items included in a review). |
| Example: | microfilm version |
Entries are collections of fields that could either have a key or be contained in the parent field of another entry.
Needs a keyword with one of the following values:
article. A short text, possibly of journalistic or scientific nature, appearing in some greater publication (default parent:periodical).chapter. A section of a greater containing work (default parent:book).entry. A short segment of media on some subject matter. Could appear in a work of reference or a data set (default parent:reference).anthos. Text published within an Anthology (default parent:anthology).report. A document compiled by authors that may be affiliated to an organization. Presents information for a specific audience or purpose.thesis. Scholarly work delivered to fulfill degree requirements at a higher education institution.web. Piece of content that can be found on the internet and is native to the medium, like an animation, a web app, or a form of content not found elsewhere. Do not use this entry type when referencing a textual blog article, instead use anarticlewith ablogparent (default parent:web).scene. A part of a show or another type of performed media, typically all taking place in the same location (default parent:video).artwork. A form of artistic/creative expression (default parent:exhibition).patent. A technical document deposited at a government agency that describes an invention to legally limit the rights of reproduction to the inventors.case. Reference to a legal case that was or is to be heard at a court of law.newspaper. The issue of a newspaper that was published on a given day.legislation. Legal document or draft thereof that is, is to be, or was to be enacted into binding law (default parent:anthology).manuscript. Written document that is submitted as a candidate for publication.original. The original container of the entry before it was re-published.post. A post on a micro-blogging platform like Twitter (default parent:post).misc. Items that do not match any of the other Entry type composites.performance. A live artistic performance.periodical. A publication that periodically publishes issues with unique content. This includes scientific journals and news magazines.proceedings. The official published record of the events at a professional conference.book. Long-form work published physically as a set of bound sheets.blog. Set of self-published articles on a website.reference. A work of reference. This could be a manual or a dictionary.conference. Professional conference. This Entry type implies that the item referenced has been an event at the conference itself. If you instead want to reference a paper published in the published proceedings of the conference, use anarticlewith aproceedingsparent.anthology. Collection of different texts on a single topic/theme.repository. Publicly visible storage of the source code for a particular software, papers, or other data and its modifications over time.thread. Written discussion on the internet triggered by an original post. Could be on a forum, social network, or Q&A site.video. Motion picture of any form, possibly with accompanying audio (default parent:video).audio. Recorded audible sound of any kind (default parent:audio).exhibition. A curated set of artworks.
The field is case insensitive. It defaults to Misc or the default parent if the entry appears as a parent of an entry that defines a default parent.
A formattable string is a string that may run through a text case transformer when used in a reference or citation. You can disable these transformations on segments of the string or the whole string.
The simplest scenario for a formattable string is to provide a string that can be case-folded:
publisher: UN World Food ProgrammeIf you want to preserve a part of the string but want to go with the style's behavior otherwise, enclose the string in braces like below. You must wrap the whole string in quotes if you do this.
publisher: "{imagiNary} Publishing"To disable formatting altogether and instead preserve the casing as it appears
in the source string, put the string in the value sub-field and specify
another sub-field as verbatim: true:
publisher:
value: UN World Food Programme
verbatim: trueTitle and sentence case folding will always be deactivated if your item has set
the language key to something other than English.
You can also include mathematical markup evaluated by Typst by wrapping it in dollars.
Furthermore, every formattable string can include a short form that a citation style can choose to render over the longer form.
journal:
value: International Proceedings of Customs
short: Int. Proc. CustomsA person consists of a name and optionally, a given name, a prefix, and a suffix for the (family) name as well as an alias. Usually, you specify a person as a string with the prefix and the last name first, then a comma, followed by a given name, another comma, and then finally the suffix. Following items are valid persons:
Doe, JanetLuther King, Martin, Jr.UNICEFvon der Leyen, Ursula
The prefix and the last name will be separated automatically using the same algorithm as BibTeX (p. 24) which can be summarized as "put all the consecutive lower case words at the start into the prefix."
Usually, this is all you need to specify a person's name. However, if a part of a name contains a comma, the prefix is not lowercased, or if one needs to specify an alias, the person can also be specified using sub-fields:
author:
given-name: Gloria Jean
name: Watkins
alias: bell hooksThe available sub-fields are name, given-name, prefix, suffix, and alias. The name field is required.
This data type requires a mapping with two fields: names which contains a list of persons or a single person and a role which specifies their role with the item:
role: ExecutiveProducer
names: ["Simon, David", "Colesberry, Robert F.", "Noble, Nina Kostroff"]translator. Translated the work from a foreign language to the cited edition.afterword. Authored an afterword.foreword. Authored a foreword.introduction. Authored an introduction.annotator. Provided value-adding annotations.commentator. Commented on the work.holder. Holds a patent or similar.compiler. Compiled the works in an Anthology.founder. Founded the publication.collaborator. Collaborated on the cited item.organizer. Organized the creation of the cited item.cast-member. Performed in the cited item.composer. Composed all or parts of the cited item's musical/audible components.producer. Produced the cited item.executive-producer. Lead Producer for the cited item.writer. Did the writing for the cited item.cinematography. Shot film/video for the cited item.director. Directed the cited item.illustrator. Illustrated the cited item.narrator. Provided narration or voice-over for the cited item.
The role field is case insensitive.
A calendar date as ISO 8601. This means that you specify the full date as YYYY-MM-DD with an optional sign in front to represent years earlier than 0000 in the Gregorian calendar. The year 1 B.C.E. is represented as 0000, the year 2 B.C.E. as -0001 and so forth.
The shortened forms YYYY or YYYY-MM are also possible.
A timestamp represents some time in a piece of media. It is given as a string of the form DD:HH:MM:SS,msms but everything except MM:SS can be omitted. Wrapping the string in double-quotes is necessary due to the colons.
The left-most time denomination only allows values that could overflow into the next-largest denomination if that is not specified. This means that the timestamp 138:00 is allowed for 2 hours and 18 minutes, but 01:78:00 is not.
A range of timestamps is a string containing two timestamps separated by a hyphen. The first timestamp in the string indicates the starting point, whereas the second one indicates the end. Wrapping the string in double-quotes is necessary due to the colons in the timestamps.
time-range: "03:35:21-03:58:46"Strings are sequences of characters as a field value. In most cases you can write your string after the colon, but if it contains a special character (:, {, }, [, ], ,, &, *, #, ?, |, -, <, >, =, !, %, @, \) it should be wrapped with double-quotes. If your string contains double-quotes, you can write those as this escape sequence: \". If you instead wrap your string in single quotes, most YAML escape sequences such as \n for a line break will be ignored.
Numeric variables are one or more numbers that are delimited by commas, ampersands, and hyphens. Numeric variables can express a single number or a range and contain only integers, but may contain negative numbers. Numeric variables can have a non-numeric prefix and suffix.
page-range: S10-15A Unicode Language Identifier identifies a language or its variants. At the simplest, you can specify an all-lowercase two-letter ISO 639-1 code like en or es as a language. It is possible to specify regions, scripts, or variants to more precisely identify a variety of a language, especially in cases where the ISO 639-1 code is considered a "macrolanguage" (zh includes both Cantonese and Mandarin). In such cases, specify values like en-US for American English or zh-Hans-CN for Mandarin written in simplified script in mainland China. The region tags have to be written in all-caps and are mostly corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha_2 codes.
Consult the documentation of the Rust crate unic-langid we use for parsing these language identifiers for more information.