Working on the MLZ suite of legal styles, I’ve been trying to figure
out a reasonably clean way to handle discretionary locator joins. For
example, a style might require something like this where the pinpoint
(23) is a paragraph:
Smith v Jones (2010) 1 All ER 100 [23]
But something like this where it is a page number:
Doe v Roe (1950) 1 All ER 100, 23
These discretionary joins are common, and they are very awkward to
handle with proper use of delimiter joins. We would use something like
this:
The locator-if-locator-is-* macros in turn contain a potentially
bewildering array of conditions that need to be kept in harmony with
one another. It’s a bit of a nightmare, and won’t be maintainable;
there will be a constant risk of either dropping the locator or
rendering it twice whenever the conditionals are touched during
revision.
What I’d like to do is limit the locator variable to a single
rendering within a cite. This way, the conditionals would be wrapped
on the first use of the variable, in the second use it could just be
rendered straight. It would make the behavior much easier to control,
and the code would become more readable.
I can’t see any downside to coding this into the processor, but if
anyone spots a potential difficulty with it, feel free to raise a red
flag.
Frank