Suggestions

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Just a update, I went in a different direction and implemented a parsing engine based similar to the PHP date() function. It has made it possible to create some fairly complex rules for such a simple task :)

This may have made things go in a different direction to what you want to take biblio in.

FYI the tokens are:

  $tokens = array(
    't' => t('Title'),
    'g' => t('Given name'),
    'm' => t('Middle name(s)'),
    'f' => t('Family name'),
    'c' => t('Credentials'),
    's' => t('Generational suffix'),
    'x' => t('First letter given'),
    'y' => t('First letter middle'),
    'z' => t('First letter family'),
    'e' => t('Conditional: Either the given or family name. Given name is given preference.'),
    'E' => t('Conditional: Either the given or family name. Family name is given preference.'),
    'i' => t('Separator 1'),
    'j' => t('Separator 2'),
    'k' => t('Separator 3'),
    '\\' => t('You can prevent a character in the format string from being expanded by escaping it with a preceding backslash.'),
    'L' => t('Modifier: Converts the next token to all lowercase.'),
    'U' => t('Modifier: Converts the next token to all uppercase.'),
    'F' => t('Modifier: Converts the first letter to uppercase.'),
    'G' => t('Modifier: Converts the first letter of ALL words to uppercase.'),
    'T' => t('Modifier: Trims whitespace around the next token.'),
    'S' => t('Modifier: Ensures that the next token is safe for the display.'),

    '+' => t('Conditional: Insert the token if both the surrounding tokens are not empty.'),
    '-' => t('Conditional: Insert the token if the previous token is not empty'),
    '~' => t('Conditional: Insert the token if the previous token is empty'),
    '=' => t('Conditional: Insert the token if the next token is not empty.'),
    '^' => t('Conditional: Insert the token if the next token is empty.'),

    '|' => t('Conditional: Uses the previous token unless empty, otherwise it uses this token.'),

    '(' => t('Group: Start of token grouping.'),
    ')' => t('Group: End of token grouping.'),
  );

And an example of one of the default token strings:

(((((t+ g)+ m)+ f)+ s)+ c)

I have a D7 version released, but the namedb submodule will probably be moved into its' own project as the name dump (names from US census data) makes the project a bit to large for most users, but I do love the weighted name auto-complete ;)

If you are still interested, let me know what things are required for integration, or I can add you as a maintainer. I'm on holiday for a while (only another 6 months to go) so the latter option would ensure a faster turn-around on issues if you need to modify the module.

Cheers

The field is based on a FAPI element, so it shouldn't matter if you use fields or the FAPI directly. The big question is that if you are working on the FAPI layer, does this actually make things easier using this module? It has been a long time since I had anything to do with the biblio module, so I am not familiar with the code.

The core developers seem to be pushing for fields rather than FAPI node additions (see the new node example), albeit IMHO I do not think that Drupal is ready for it yet. No way to locks for fields, etc. But this could mean that the author could be a bundle with a field. Adds a bit of complication though. I've only tried with file based bundle types, and had issues due to the additional complications of these and there were a number of bugs in File field introduced by late changes to the fapi code.

As a side note, the database schema in fields are locked down in Drupal 7, so this makes things a bit easier when handling db tasks. Drupal 6 supported dynamic columns. So this means that all of the components in name are 255 varchar, and soft limits are being set to restrict the size and available columns.