Dear all, I want to set up a shared bibliographic reference database for my research group, and I'm looking at software like refbase http:// refbase.sourceforge.net/ or refdb http://refdb.sourceforge.net/ to replace the somewhat random collection of personal BibTeX .bib files we have. Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer in using such things, and hooking them up to ConTeXt? Most of these systems will of course emit a .bib file which will obviously work, but will any emit the .bbl so I can forget about BibTeX? Will luatex one day connect to a bib database and fetch the details of a cited reference? Is there a ConTeXt "approved" way forward for this sort of thing? Thanks in advance, Robin
Hello Robin, hello list, * Robin Kirkham wrote on Apr/18/2008:
I want to set up a shared bibliographic reference database for my research group, and I'm looking at software like refbase http://refbase.sourceforge.net/ or refdb http://refdb.sourceforge.net/ to replace the somewhat random collection of personal BibTeX .bib files we have.
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer in using such things, and hooking them up to ConTeXt? Most of these systems will of course emit a .bib file which will obviously work, but will any emit the .bbl so I can forget about BibTeX? Will luatex one day connect to a bib database and fetch the details of a cited reference? Is there a ConTeXt "approved" way forward for this sort of thing?
Not that I am able to help you very much further, but I am right now in a similar situation. I am in the process of setting up a db with wikindx http://wikindx.sf.net/ The main developer is obviously not working with any TeX flavour, but there is some Bibtex im-/export (which also concerns only .bib files) that I am ATM fiddling with, but I thought I might add that one to the list of databases you mentioned. Cheers, Andreas
Robin Kirkham wrote:
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer in using such things, and hooking them up to ConTeXt? Most of these systems will of course emit a .bib file which will obviously work, but will any
Please have a look at the biblographic module. It comes with its own bst files that convert bib to a private data format. http://modules.contextgarden.net/bib Currently, the bibliographic module only supports .bib files, but: if you want to be ready for the future, find a reference manager that can export to MODS: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ Best wishes, Taco
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Taco Hoekwater
Robin Kirkham wrote:
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer in using such things, and hooking them up to ConTeXt? Most of these systems will of course emit a .bib file which will obviously work, but will any
Please have a look at the biblographic module. It comes with its own bst files that convert bib to a private data format.
http://modules.contextgarden.net/bib
Currently, the bibliographic module only supports .bib files, but: if you want to be ready for the future, find a reference manager that can export to MODS:
Or even better write a new bib module with xml in MODS format as database :-) Wolfgang
Hello Taco, hello list, * Taco Hoekwater wrote on Apr/18/2008:
if you want to be ready for the future, find a reference manager that can export to MODS:
Just out of curiosity: What are your reasons for preferring this over TEI: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/CO.html#COBI (I have only by your mail learnt about MODS and am currently working through it, so please excuse me if that question doesn't even make sense at all.) Thanks, Andreas
Hi, Andreas Wagner wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are your reasons for preferring this over TEI:
MODS was a logical choice mostly my background (scientific publishers => MARC databases => MODS), and that BruceD'Arcus liked it. Btw, his blog is full of bibliographic articles, if you are interested: http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/ (but it looks like he has switched over to RDF now) I am not really set to any particular xml format, and there are more mainstream choices (risx comes to mind). But the few times I've had to work with TEI stuff I found that you can easily get much more than you bargained for. Bibliographic data is not easy on its own, and a format that allows (almost promotes) extra tags to be embedded also is not helping at all. Look at this: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ref-author.html Just the 'core' module is already pretty complex, but 'namesdates' and 'linking' are definately also required for a useful bibliographic database. The nice, consise examples in the TEI docs are misleading because <author>Lucy Allen Paton</author> is useless, more specifics are needed. We need at least this: <author> <persName> <forename>Lucy</forename> <forename>Allen</forename> <surname>Paton</surname> </persName> </author> But with the use of <persName>, there are suddenly a gazillion ways an author can encode the same name (and it does not preclude any of the other ways to encode a name). http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ND.html#NDPER Etc. etc. Imagine having to support that in a simple context module. Cheers, Taco
Hello Taco, hello list, * Taco Hoekwater wrote on Apr/18/2008:
Andreas Wagner wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are your reasons for preferring this over TEI:
MODS was a logical choice mostly my background (scientific publishers => MARC databases => MODS), and that BruceD'Arcus liked it. Btw, his blog is full of bibliographic articles, if you are interested:
[...and then some...] Thank you really a lot, Taco. I have been more or less learning about these things for a few weeks and you have indeed provided me with a couple of very good resources and concerns. Cheers, Andreas
Taco Hoekwater
Hi,
Andreas Wagner wrote:
Just out of curiosity: What are your reasons for preferring this over TEI:
MODS was a logical choice mostly my background (scientific publishers => MARC databases => MODS), and that BruceD'Arcus liked it. Btw, his blog is full of bibliographic articles, if you are interested:
http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/
(but it looks like he has switched over to RDF now)
Yes, but ...
I am not really set to any particular xml format, and there are more mainstream choices (risx comes to mind).
... I'd say for the design of something like mbib v2 I'd advocate an internal model that abstracts away from any particular more concrete representation. So think in terms of maybe a standard input driver, but leave room for easy development of others. There's some work going on a Python version of my citeproc effort, for example, and he's planning input drivers for MODS, RDF, BibTeX, etc. http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/citeproc-py/citeproc/ This makes is easy for someone to write another input driver for some SQL model.
But the few times I've had to work with TEI stuff I found that you can easily get much more than you bargained for. Bibliographic data is not easy on its own, and a format that allows (almost promotes) extra tags to be embedded also is not helping at all.
Look at this:
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ref-author.html
Just the 'core' module is already pretty complex, but 'namesdates' and 'linking' are definately also required for a useful bibliographic database.
The nice, consise examples in the TEI docs are misleading because
<author>Lucy Allen Paton</author>
is useless, more specifics are needed. We need at least this:
<author> <persName> <forename>Lucy</forename> <forename>Allen</forename> <surname>Paton</surname> </persName> </author>
But with the use of <persName>, there are suddenly a gazillion ways an author can encode the same name (and it does not preclude any of the other ways to encode a name).
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ND.html#NDPER
Etc. etc. Imagine having to support that in a simple context module.
In the XML citation style language I designed [1] (which *could* serve as the basis for that "internal model" I mention above), there's an implicit notion that any name can have both a sort form and a display form, and that they may (but in contexts like Eastern Europe or Asia often don't) differ. This makes things in many ways both simpler, and more general (works for organizations, as well as is more international-friendly than traditional first/last). You just handle the details you note above in the input drive code. Bruce [1] http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/csl/schema/trunk/csl.rnc?v...
Taco Hoekwater
But the few times I've had to work with TEI stuff I found that you can easily get much more than you bargained for. Bibliographic data is not easy on its own, and a format that allows (almost promotes) extra tags to be embedded also is not helping at all.
... MODS has some of these issues too. Consider these are both valid: <name type="personal"> <namePart>Jane Doe</namePart> <role> <roleTerm type="text">creator</roleTerm> </role> </name> <name type="personal"> <namePart type="given">Jane</namePart> <namePart type="family">Doe</namePart> <role> <roleTerm type="text">creator</roleTerm> </role> </name> So in many formats there's a balance between flexibility and brevity/predictability. FWIW, I've just settled on RDF for my own data needs between it provides the formal rigor of relational databases (that XML per se lacks), but much more flexibility. But as I said in the previous note, I don't think the data format has to matter that much to formatting software (at its core that is). Bruce
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Robin Kirkham
Dear all,
I want to set up a shared bibliographic reference database for my research group, and I'm looking at software like refbase http:// refbase.sourceforge.net/ or refdb http://refdb.sourceforge.net/ to replace the somewhat random collection of personal BibTeX .bib files we have.
Does anyone have any experience or advice to offer in using such things, and hooking them up to ConTeXt? Most of these systems will of course emit a .bib file which will obviously work, but will any emit the .bbl so I can forget about BibTeX? Will luatex one day connect to a bib database and fetch the details of a cited reference? Is there a ConTeXt "approved" way forward for this sort of thing?
I can tell you a few things that don't work! In our lab we have both
TeX and Word users. Many of them had been using a DOS package
called papyrus, using a special markup that could be translated
to tex (.bbl) files. Nothing we found was really satisfactory, so
we bought EndNote, which could import from papyrus via "refer"
format and can export to "almost bibtex". One problem is that
EndNote uses unicode, so we end up with รจ, etc. that must
be translated for some user's versions of bibtex. The database
now has a nearly infinite variety of different quote marks:
`a`, 'a', ``a'', "a", etc. depending on how the entry was made
(many are pasted from online or pdf sources).
EndNote is really designed for individual users, although sold
in bulk. If 2 people open the same database on a shared
drive they end up with a corrupt database.
In my view, a bibliographic database needs to store each
reference in the "source" or original format, whether bibtex,
refer, or one of the newer forms, and provide translators
and version tracking, so each file can have forks for different
uses (e.g., ascii vs unicode char. sets) and edits can be
preserved for the next user. In practice, people just dump
selected refs to a bib file, make the .bbl file, and fix problems
there, so fixes rarely make it back to the master database.
If they did, we would still have accents and quote marks
being switched back and forth depending on who last used
the entry.
--
George N. White III
participants (7)
-
Andreas Wagner -
Bruce D'Arcus -
Bruce D\'Arcus
-
George N. White III -
Robin Kirkham -
Taco Hoekwater -
Wolfgang Schuster