[pmwiki-users] Bibliographies

[Tom Backer Johnsen]

John Rankin wrote:
> On Thursday, 7 September 2006 6:52 AM, Tom Backer Johnsen <backer at psych.uib.no> wrote:
>> John Rankin wrote:
>>
>> ....
>>
>>> If this sounds as if it might be suitable, the first step would
>>> be to work out what the entry form should look like and how you'd
>>> like to cite bib entries from the wiki pages themselves.
>> I said that I would like to have the intext references in the format 
>> (<author>, <year>).  One of the problems with BibTexRef is that the 
>> intext references contain the name of the reference alone, which in my 
>> eyes is more or less meaningless.  Well, I bought a book about PhP 
>> today, read the script as carefully as I could, and it sems that I am 
>> able to handle at least one aspect of the problem, getting the intext 
>> references into the format I would like to have.
>>
>> With some guessing it turns out that the source of this type of 
>> reference is the function cite(), by adding a function getYear() and 
>> fiddling with the string expression in the cite() function I am 
>> getting close.  I have to look into a different version of 
>> getAuthors() since that produces a list of authors with full names, 
>> while I want surnames alone, separated by commas.  I think I know how 
>> to do that.
>>
>> The main drawback with this type of modification is that it is coded 
>> towards an APA type of reference (which is common, but still).
>>
>> Tom
>>
> Waving a magic wand, it seems to me that in an ideal world one wants
> something like the following functionality.
> 
> The bib file is either a single pmwiki page (references identified 
> by anchors) or multiple pages (one page per reference).

If this implies that a pmwiki page replaces a standard BibTex file, I 
am sceptical.  To accumulate a set of references to be used in various 
  kinds of publications is for most researchers a lengthy process, and 
it is clear advantage to use a data base format that is usable in 
other contexts, e.g. Lyx.

> References use standard pmwiki markup, with the ability to identify
> the elements making up each reference (use bibedit for a list of
> elements).

Yepp, that seems simple even for a complete novice in respect to PhP 
like me, some modifications to BibTexRef should take care of that. 
The inclusion of references should be as simple as possible.  I would 
for instance prefer the name of the .bib file to be optional rather 
than having to be explicitly entered for every reference.  Most 
writers would after all use only one .bib file for each project.

> Template pages define how a reference should be presented, so the
> same references can be formatted in different ways for different
> publications.

Would it be possible to use standard BibTex type .bst files for that 
purpose?  Again, the advantage is that the format is well known.
> 
> The wiki can import and export files in bibtex format.
> 
> There is a form for adding new references, with rules for each
> reference type (article, book, inbook, etc).

That is the basic tool I am looking for as the second step.  Since the 
  file format for BibTex is essentially plain text, the file handling 
sould be relatively simple.  The user interface for PmWiki is a 
different matter.  One list I have seen included 13 different types of 
entries, each with different combinations of required and Optitional 
field.

> There is a choice of in-text citation styles. For example,
> 
> (:cite id=refid kind=value:)
> 
> where id is the anchor identifying the reference or its
> pagename and kind could include:
> 
> text  -> Hawking et al. (2006)
> 
> paren -> (Hawking et al. 2006)
> 
> imparen -> Hawking et al. 2006
> 
> and so on. You could even do something like:
> 
> (:cite id=refid text="chapter 3":) giving
> 
> Hawking et al. (2006, chapter 3) ...
> 
> (:cite:) is just to illustrate capability; I think a variant on
> link markup may be more suitable. The markup has to support:
> - a unique reference (link)
> - a citation style
> - additional text, which may include wiki markup
>   for example (:cite id=refid text="''last'' chapter":) would
>   produce <em>last</em> chapter

As far as I have seen, there are three basic styles, a number in 
square brackets, the name of the reference in square brackets, and the 
type I prefer, author and year.  In that latter case there are some 
variants in respect to braces etc.

The creation of a bibliography itself should be a relatively simple 
matter, but where the appearance of the entries themselves in the 
bibliography can be quite complex.  I wonder how Lyx works in this 
respect?

As an aside, it would be very nice to have an export option of PmWiki 
pages to a Lyx type file.

Tom


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| Tom Backer Johnsen, Psychometrics Unit,  Faculty of Psychology |
| University of Bergen, Christies gt. 12, N-5015 Bergen,  NORWAY |
| Tel : +47-5558-9185                        Fax : +47-5558-9879 |
| Email : backer at psych.uib.no    URL : http://www.galton.uib.no/ |
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