Tony, addressing your first question:
From: "Hammond, Tony" <>
> title=(author=kernighan)
> is equivalent to
> author=kernighan
> "
>
> and following up with him he claimed this was cooked into the BNF
Well first take a look at this thread and see if it helps put this into some
perspective.
http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0603&L=srw-ed&D=0&T=0&X=2C676213DF8F2521EB&P=1982
This is a convoluted mess that is better ignored. The grammar has a hole
that lead to nonsensical queries and I think that the consensus was that it
is harder to fix the grammar than to just say that queries like these are
nonsensical.
The real issue was a query like "title=(A or B)". Is it a shorthand
for - "title=A or title=B". Rob argued yes. Mike argued no, argued very
passionately and angrily (and nobody was quite sure what the anger was
about). It was pointed out that if that query is allowed, then the grammar
also allows title=(author=A or B) and so on. But I don't think that anyone
agreed that "title=(author=A)" should be interpreted to mean "author=A".
It was that argument when Mike famously told everyone on the Ed. Board to
"FK OFF" and he hasn't been heard from since (and that was three years ago).
So he has an ax to grind over this and isn't entirely open minded about this
question.
--Ray
