On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Robin Kirkham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
