Hi Hans,
Hans Hagen
I wonder, is there any interest in the following:
- support for http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ as basic bibl format
I think Ulf's conclusions are right. MODS is expressive, which is why I was originally attracted to it, but it's also more complex than it needs to be for this sort of use case. The big question becomes, if not MODS, then what? As Ulf pointed out, my solution -- and the one I will be advocating for OpenDoucment (I am on the TC) -- is to use a particular RDF serialization. Indeed, I have a draft RELAX NG schema for it, and my formatting system (citeproc) now works with it quite well. Microsoft, incidentally, is implementing pretty good bib support (that looks suspiciously like what I've been advocating for OpenOffice!), which I've blogged about extensively. Their XML format is not bad, though it is totally flat, which means it won't be as flexible as MODS or RDF. More here: http://netapps.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/darcusb/archives/2006/06/16/flat-vs-...
- provide converters from marcs and bibtex to mods - layer the bib module on top of that
Curious question: would you be writing it in Lua (closer to the pdftex level), or go more high-level (as now)?
If so, who'd like to join/volunteer for subtasks
I can certainly help with advice and design, particularly if you want to use CSL to configure the output. I've made some changes to it (again) recently, but think I'm zeroing in on freezing it. The more feedback I get, the easier it'll be to do that. Incidentally, I'm considering the possibility of submitting CSL to OASIS for standardization, though only if I can get some industry players involved. Bruce