Re: [NTG-context] Bibliography, unicode strings, @ELECTRONIC, sorting and bibtex

Hi all, ·········

2012-09-18 "Schmitz Thomas A." :

...

...

What is BibTeX used for in ConTeXt? As far as I can see, it reads the .bib database and generates a .bbl file which then is read in by ConTeXt. Why do we need an external tool for this? Why does ConTeXt not read in the .bib database and directly save it as a Lua table?

Because nobody has coded that part yet? This may not be as easy as you make it sound because quite a few heuristics go into parsing bibtex files (e.g., look at the way in which bibtex divides names into first name, last name, von-part, jr-part).

I'm aware of that. So it basically boils down to the fact that bibliographies are not popular among ConTeXt users (including Hans) and therefore much functionality is not properly implemented or cared for.

tl;dr: It’s not unpopular, it’s a Hard Problem™. I guess that is so because bibliographies and citation rules are a hard problem to solve generally. As a recent thread on this list revealed, most of us are content to instead solve the much easier problem of creating some bib functionality themselves, tailored to their own needs.[0] A given cite/bib ruleset is easy to implement (as long as you don’t put too much weight on sorting) -- we have Lua, after all. Developing a framework for bibliographies, where everything needs to be adjustable and parameterized (by non-technical people) on demand while remaining stable over a long time, is however a totally different matter. Just have a look at the biber/biblatex codebase and decide yourself. (Now try to imagine the same without Perl and XML to get the style bonus ;-) ) Context, as opposed to LaTeX, lacks the consistent formatting requirements by journals and editors, simply because they don’t usually accept it as an input format. [0] http://www.mail-archive.com/ntg-context@ntg.nl/msg62855.html

And BibTeX is used since it understands the semantics of bib files, although a pure ConTeXt/Lua solution would be possible. Without BibTeX this functionality would be missing since no one is willing to implement a parser for .bib databases.

Context happens to have such a parser, written in Lua. Probably the best one around: ······································································· \starttext \startluacode local db = bibtex.new() bibtex.load(db, "filename.bib") table.print(db) \stopluacode \stoptext ······································································· Regards Philipp

If I only had time…

Marco

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

-- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments