On 20 Feb 2009, at 4:38 PM, Michael McCracken wrote: > On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Christiaan Hofman > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 20 Feb 2009, at 6:45 AM, Douglas Stebila wrote: >> >>> On 2009-Feb-19, at 1:20 AM, Christiaan Hofman wrote: >>> >>>> Are you aware of the Web Group? >>> >>> >>> The Web Group is nice, but (a) does not fit naturally into many >>> people's workflow, and (b) does not allow for adding importers >>> without >>> altering the BibDesk source code. >>> >>> On 2009-Feb-19, at 9:49 AM, Maxwell, Adam R wrote: >>> >>>> The short answer is no. A few sites are supported in the Web group >>>> that >>>> Christiaan mentioned, but there's no way for users to write plugins >>>> that tie >>>> into that group. >>> >>> It seems to me the natural way to do this right would be to have any >>> easy way of plugins that can be used either in the web group or >>> can be >>> accessed by AppleScript, which then allows for easy scripts to be >>> written for Safari or Firefox or your web browser of choice. >>> >> >> But indeed, BD does not live "inside" your browser. And I don't think >> BD should somehow go inside. The best I could think of would be some >> scripting support to tell BD to import from some URL. >> >> It's not completely clear to me what part of the process you'd want >> BD >> to perform. >> >>>> If you're using Firefox, you might be interested in this: >>>> http://www.mackerron.com/. It uses Zotero's scrapers to push >>>> references to >>>> BibDesk. >>> >>> I was not aware of Citeulike or Zotero. Since a lot of work has >>> been >>> done by people in developing importers for Zotero it would be nice >>> if >>> those importers could be adapted for more generic use outside of the >>> Zotero framework, but, after perusing the code, that seems unlikely. >>> It would be great if there was a standardized importer framework so >>> that importers could be written once and used in lots of programs -- >>> Zotero, BibDesk, etc. -- but that may be beyond the scope of what is >>> reasonable to do at this point. >>> >> >> I don't know too much about it, but the language that these importers >> use is very different from anything BD supports, so it would be very >> difficult / a lot of work to implement it. I never considered it very >> likely. >> >>> If someone more familiar with the BibDesk source code is >>> interested in >>> this and willing to work with me on this, I am willing to put some >>> time into developing this. But I don't want to just go off and >>> write >>> it without knowing that it fits within the vision the core >>> developers >>> have for BibDesk. >>> >>> Douglas >> >> We've had some talk about writing importers in the past. At first >> Mike >> didn't think it was a good idea, because it's more manageable to >> write >> directly in BD code. However I think that was based on the assumption >> of a Obj-C plugin. I think it would be worthwhile to have a plugin >> mechanism for more general (scripting) languages, but only if it is >> well thought through beforehand (otherwise it will be a real PITA to >> work with it in the long run) and well designed. Moreover, I think >> also only if it supports various common languages, I'd say at least >> python. And I think here comes the pain, because communicating with >> any language other than AppleScript is still far from trivial from >> Cocoa. I wouldn't know how to do it. But for sure if someone does and >> wants to com in, I'd be happy to assist form the BD side. > > Integrating Zotero might be getting easier - here is a bridge between > javascript and objc: > http://code.google.com/p/jsxobjc/ > > Also, adding support for python (actually pyobjc) plugins might be > easier than it sounds. > > I understand code talks and I'm just writing emails here, but I > actually think that Applescript is no longer any easier to support > (and may actually be harder) than some more popular languages. > > I'm going to try to spend a little time this weekend putting PyObjC > into BibDesk. We'll see how it goes. > > > -mike
If this is a lot of change to the existing code, could you perhaps wait a little bit? I'm in the process of a quite extensive rewrite on another branch. Christiaan >> Christiaan >> >>> >>>> On 18 Feb 2009, at 6:29 PM, Douglas Stebila wrote: >>>> >>>>> Is there a standard, simple way to write and install methods for >>>>> BibDesk to import citations from Safari/Firefox? >>>>> >>>>> Here's the scenario I'm thinking of. Users are browsing the web >>>>> in >>>>> Safari or Firefox and they come across a paper on a major site >>>>> (arXiv, >>>>> Springer, IEEE, etc.) for which they'd like to import the citation >>>>> into BibDesk. It would be great if they could access an >>>>> AppleScript >>>>> in Safari/Firefox, or switch to BibDesk and click a single button, >>>>> and >>>>> have BibDesk parse the website, pull out the right bibliographic >>>>> data, >>>>> and create a new citation. >>>>> >>>>> Now, obviously having BibDesk parse all the data and figure it out >>>>> automatically is too hard. But one could write parsers for >>>>> individual >>>>> websites that know the idiosyncracies of various websites. >>>>> Indeed, >>>>> this is what a lot of the importer AppleScripts on the BibDesk >>>>> wiki >>>>> do: >>>>> >>>>> http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/bibdesk/index.php?title=BibDesk_Applescripts >>>>> >>>>> But this results in a lot of duplication of work and work being >>>>> done >>>>> in a non-standard way. I think there should be (and perhaps there >>>>> is >>>>> and I just don't know about it) a standard way of adding importers >>>>> of >>>>> this form into BibDesk at runtime, and moreover that these >>>>> importers >>>>> should be able to be written in scripting languages (AppleScript, >>>>> shell script, etc.) as opposed to having to be written in >>>>> Objective-C >>>>> in the main BibDesk source tree. This would allow users to easily >>>>> add >>>>> importers for their favourite websites without needing to know >>>>> Objective-C. >>>>> >>>>> I've actually written such an extensible framework entirely in >>>>> AppleScript that has importer scripts for websites that I use >>>>> (arXiv, >>>>> IEEE, ACM, Springer), so if you want to see what I mean a >>>>> temporary >>>>> version is available for download at >>>>> http://www.douglas.stebila.ca/files/code/bibdesk/ >>>>> Importers-0.9.2.zip >>>>> I'd be happy to contribute to developing part of this if people >>>>> think >>>>> it should be added to BibDesk, but I'm not a very good Objective-C >>>>> coder. >>>>> >>>>> But I think this is functionality that lots of people will want >>>>> and >>>>> so >>>>> there should be one way to do it, not lots of people writing >>>>> random >>>>> scripts and posting them in random locations. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> Douglas >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
