David is proposing that the scope of the OOo bibliogrpahy tools be kept to an absolute minimum. I would support this.
I would like to see: 1. An external reference database / research tool that could be used with both Word and Writer. It should be able to store not jsut metadata but full-text articles, notes, webpage snapshots & other supporting data. I am still not convinced that storing reference details with a document is a good idea; the biggest reason is that even if interop can be sorted out this will still only work with Word 2007 and a future version of Writer. 2. An external CSL editor that can export compiled XSLT for Word - and maybe Python code for Writer. (I don't agree with Bruce that this needs to be built in to Word or that the size of XSLT files is a problem since they would be auto-generated from a CSL file). 3. Interoperable citation markers that will allow cross-word-processor teams to work together. Microsoft are clearly not going to be swayed by lobbying, and it's not clear to me how much Sun will do to push this stuff through. Why not concentrate on building stand-alone tools that work with the current installed base of word processing software? That is, build a better EndNote. (That's what I hope my team will be doing over the coming year - in alignment with the work going on here) On 7/17/06, David Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sunday 16 July 2006 9:47 pm, Bruce D'Arcus wrote: > > And I think with some caveats, they will have met these goals. I am > particularly intrigued by their no-local-database approach, where the > editing forms are only editing XML data embedded in the file package. > > This is something we need to seriously consider for OOo (though we can > do a better job). I have been think about this question, what do we need a local SQL database for? And how does it need to be integrated with the Bibliographic application? SQL databases are good for very large quantities of data, and would essential if the the volume of data was greater that could could be held in list in memory.(which is now a very big list) This would not be the case for the citations to a single document. SQL databases are also good for sharing data and update facilities amongst many users. An SQL database is not necessary to store the local citations in documents even temporarily as they are worked on. However Bib users may want to store collections of citations, in some manner, and SQL databases are probably a mechanism we may want to support. If only to provide a browse and 'insert into document' function, as would do for internet / remote database search and insert. What the "no-local-database approach, where the editing forms are only editing XML data embedded in the file package" implies though is OOoBib would NOT be providing a mechanism or maintaining your collection of citations. That is, looking through the collection and spotting a error and fixing it. Perhaps suggest we advise people to use one of the many third party tools for that purpose. We can certainly do this in the early stages as we develop the application. One of the difficulties with a building a close connection between the xml local storage and a SQL database, is that the xml data will support formatted text, included embedded document objects (mathematical formula etc). SQL database are ascii based. Of course a one way to deal with this is to have a ascii version of each potentially formatted field and the formatted version. (you need the plain ascii field for searching) If we want to store and maintain bibliographic collections it would be easier if the collections were stored in a xml database such as eXist, and the field conversion problems disappear. I am thinking that the xml database for local storage of citation collections would be the a good choice as the some the local editing tools would work in the same way on the in-document citations and the xml database citations. This is least work option for storage of collections of citations. With a SQL database we would need to build two sets of editing tools - xml and SQL. I do not have any firm ideas about this, these are just my musings. David -- ------------------- David N. Wilson Co-Project Lead for the Bibliographic OpenOffice Project http://bibliographic.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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