Matt Price writes:
> Though I can see that other folks might not want this, I'd like to
> make a plea for a hot-linked title in a short-format list. This is
> mostly because once you have an <a href> tag, it's possible to write
> fully-functional mycroft search engines for mozilla (see
> http://mycroft.mozdev.org; if you don't use this already, I can just
> about guarantee you will 10 minutes after you check out the website).
> I've already done this for a number of libraries and (non-free,
> subscription based) bibliographical search engines I use. I would
> ultimately like to see the development of a fully-functional
> bibliographical search plugin for mozilla... Anyway, I'd like to keep
> the possibility of browser-integration open for this project.
>
I haven't heard of this yet, but this sounds exciting.
> Notes should be relatively simple -- the only hard part is getting the
> information into the xml format that refdb uses. If poss I'd like to
> see this done in xslt again, so that the hard part is abstracted from
> the scripting language and can be recycled in perl/python/whatever.
> Bruce, you're the xslt person, how does that shound to you?
I'm not too worried about this. The XML format is so simple that it
wouldn't hurt to do the mapping directly in the scripting
language. But if you figure out an XSLT script that does the job, all
the better.
> 1) this is important -- choosing a reference format. Do you think risx/xslt
> is the way to go again, or would something simple like bibtex be more
> appropriate? Once more, the easier it is to move across scripting
> languages, the happier I'll be with the final product, don't know if
> this matters to anyone else. But I do like the idea of refdb as a
> sort of module for integration with all kinds of projects, so if clean
> html can be transparently produced with a minimum of hacking by end
> users, that's a big plus, I think.
>
Like Bruce already said, I'd suggest to avoid BibTeX. This format is
simply odd and next to impossible to parse properly. XML is the best
connector between an input form and a database. risx would be a fairly
simple start, but if well-designed, the interface could easily be
adapted to things like MODS.
> 2) I'm a bit worried about parsing author fields -- I'd prefer to have
> each author's name entered on a separate line, but I'm not sure that
> can be done without making a multiline textarea, which I'd rather not
> have (I like the simplicity and compactness of my current entry
> format, even if I don't really like anything else).
>
Definitely the most horrible part. If you use a single input field for
names, you'll have to educate users to stick to a consistent format or
employ a lot of program logic to fix incorrect data. Some users don't
like their data to be fiddled with, as we've seen on this list
recently, so any solution will have to walk a thin line between
usability on the input side and usability of the data on the reference
manager/bibliography tool side.
regards,
Markus
--
Markus Hoenicka
markus.hoenicka@xxxxxxx
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de
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