[pmwiki-users] Bibliographies

John Rankin john.rankin at affinity.co.nz
Thu Sep 7 18:31:47 CDT 2006


On Friday, 8 September 2006 7:11 AM, christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com wrote:
>On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
>
>> > 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.
>
>Sorry for my long post here, but I think you'll find it useful. Apologies 
>if I'm explaining things you already know. I also apologize for bursting 
>in on this thread without having thoroughly read the previous posts as 
>well as I would like. This link might be useful btw:
>	http://wiki.lyx.org/BibTeX/BibTeX
>
><snip>
>
>I hope this has helped!
>/Christian
>
What a great post! I need to study it carefully, but here are a few
observations.

The following seems to me a reasonable starting point:

- there is a wiki page per bib file

- an author should be able to specify a default wikipage to use
  for all bib references, rather than having to specify the
  bib page in each reference

- the author can over-ride the default bibfile page for
  individual references

- when viewing the page in html:
  - the reference displays in an appropriate style, as a link
  - clicking the link displays a correctly formatted citation [1]

- using the PublishPDF library + a Wikipublisher server:
  - generate a pdf including citations and a list of references
  - export the whole thing (from a short article to a long book)
    as LaTeX [2]

The current Cookbook/BibtexRef recipe goes a long way towards this.
The wikibook DTD we use to process wiki markup -> wikibook xml 
-> LaTeX -> pdf supports use of a bib file, but we haven't
implemented this capability in wikipublisher as yet.
-- 
JR
--
John Rankin

[1] this was why I thought it needed an anchor for each reference,
    but if it uses bibtex markup, rather than wiki markup, an anchor
    is not needed -- I think it's an open question whether to use
    bibtex or wiki markup for the wiki page:
    ++ no need to convert existing bibtex files
    ++ can reuse the bib file in other applications, like Lyx
    -- excludes those who don't use bibtex (all the EndNote users)

[2] the computer-generated LaTeX is not the prettiest, but it's
    complete and correct; the new PmWiki <!--HTMLFooter--> skin
    directive makes it easy for wikipublisher to insert the
    wikibook xml that defines references (*)

(*) I note the change from <!--HeaderText--> to <!--HTMLHeader-->
    as the new directive for skin templates.

    IMO it's unfortunate that PmWiki uses HTML-centric wording
    when the software is (almost) markup-agnistic and can be used
    to generate many different flavours of xml from the same wiki
    markup. My vote would have been for <!--XMLHeader--> and
    <!--XMLFooter-->. I think one of the great virtues of PmWiki
    is that it is markup-agnistic and it hides this shining design
    jewel under a bushel to use 'HTML'. For example, PmWiki could
    generate TeXML output, which gives another path to LaTeX. See
    http://getfo.org/texml/ for more information.






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