# One last disambiguation wrinkle

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/one-last-disambiguation-wrinkle/587>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [March 30, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/one-last-disambiguation-wrinkle/587 "2009-03-30T02:05:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frank\_Bennett](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/frank_bennett/32/198_2.png) [@Frank\_Bennett](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Frank_Bennett)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/one-last-disambiguation-wrinkle/587/1 "2009-03-30T02:05:04Z")

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I think this will be the last of my puzzles over disambiguation.  
Consider the following full namesets:

John Doe, Jane Roe, Robert Brown, Tim Smith, Edward Jones  
John Doe, Janet Roe, Richard Brown, Tom Smith, Edward Jones

With current behaviour, if we implement minimal givens expansion, and  
use add-names, initializing, an et-al-min of 3 and a use-first of 1, I  
think this would become:

J. Doe, Jane Roe, R. Brown, T. Smith, E. Jones  
J. Doe, Janet Roe, R. Brown, T. Smith, E. Jones

It seems to me that an editor might prefer for this to be shrunk to  
the following unambiguous form:

J. Doe, Jane Roe, et al.  
J. Doe, Janet Roe, et al.

In citeproc-js, I _should_ be able to do this fairly simply, because  
of the way the disambiguation machinery has been  
(re-re-re-re-)written. I think it’s probably right, because it makes  
for smaller keys in the text of the document. Questions are:

1. Is the latter behaviour desirable?

2. If so, then:

2a) Should things just work this way, or should there be options?

2b) For Andrea, how much of a headache would it be to implement this  
in citeproc-hs?

Frank

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**Author:** ![Andrea\_Rossato1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Andrea\_Rossato1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Andrea_Rossato1)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 5:15pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/one-last-disambiguation-wrinkle/587/2 "2009-03-30T17:15:03Z")

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These are my opinions:

> I think this will be the last of my puzzles over disambiguation.  
> Consider the following full namesets:
> 
> John Doe, Jane Roe, Robert Brown, Tim Smith, Edward Jones  
> John Doe, Janet Roe, Richard Brown, Tom Smith, Edward Jones
> 
> With current behaviour, if we implement minimal givens expansion, and  
> use add-names, initializing, an et-al-min of 3 and a use-first of 1, I  
> think this would become:
> 
> J. Doe, Jane Roe, R. Brown, T. Smith, E. Jones  
> J. Doe, Janet Roe, R. Brown, T. Smith, E. Jones
> 
> It seems to me that an editor might prefer for this to be shrunk to  
> the following unambiguous form:
> 
> J. Doe, Jane Roe, et al.  
> J. Doe, Janet Roe, et al.
> 
> In citeproc-js, I _should_ be able to do this fairly simply, because  
> of the way the disambiguation machinery has been  
> (re-re-re-re-)written. I think it’s probably right, because it makes  
> for smaller keys in the text of the document. Questions are:
> 
> 1. Is the latter behaviour desirable?

yes. minimal effort and minimal expansion is the right to go.

> 1. If so, then:
> 
> 2a) Should things just work this way, or should there be options?

No options. This seems to me the correct default.

> 2b) For Andrea, how much of a headache would it be to implement this  
> in citeproc-hs?

A huge one I’m afraid. If the number of contributor were fixed it  
would be a line of code. Every contributor is a list of all the  
possible strings the can come out by applying disambiguation rules. I  
need to get all possibilities. Suppose this list of lists:  
[[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]

I need to get:

[[1,4],[1,5],[1,6],[2,4],[2,5],[2,6],[3,4],[3,5],[3,6]]

I’ll find a solution.

Andrea