On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Christiaan Hofman <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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.
Yeah, I thought about the omni-removal after I wrote that - I actually haven't had as much free time this weekend as I thought, so I might not get to it. But I don't anticipate it causing too much merging headache. If it looks like it will, I'll put it off. -mike >>> 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 > -- Michael McCracken UCSD CSE PhD Candidate research: http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/~mmccrack/ misc: http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
