Hi all, ···<date: 2012-09-18, Tuesday>···<from: Marco Patzer>···
> 2012-09-18 "Schmitz Thomas A." <thomas.schm...@uni-bonn.de>: > > > > What is BibTeX used for in ConTeXt? As far as I can see, it reads > > > the .bib database and generates a .bbl file which then is read in by > > > ConTeXt. Why do we need an external tool for this? Why does ConTeXt > > > not read in the .bib database and directly save it as a Lua table? > > > > Because nobody has coded that part yet? This may not be as easy as > > you make it sound because quite a few heuristics go into parsing > > bibtex files (e.g., look at the way in which bibtex divides names > > into first name, last name, von-part, jr-part). > > I'm aware of that. So it basically boils down to the fact that > bibliographies are not popular among ConTeXt users (including Hans) > and therefore much functionality is not properly implemented or > cared for. tl;dr: It’s not unpopular, it’s a Hard Problem™. I guess that is so because bibliographies and citation rules are a hard problem to solve generally. As a recent thread on this list revealed, most of us are content to instead solve the much easier problem of creating some bib functionality themselves, tailored to their own needs.[0] A given cite/bib ruleset is easy to implement (as long as you don’t put too much weight on sorting) -- we have Lua, after all. Developing a framework for bibliographies, where everything needs to be adjustable and parameterized (by non-technical people) on demand while remaining stable over a long time, is however a totally different matter. Just have a look at the biber/biblatex codebase and decide yourself. (Now try to imagine the same without Perl and XML to get the style bonus ;-) ) Context, as opposed to LaTeX, lacks the consistent formatting requirements by journals and editors, simply because they don’t usually accept it as an input format. [0] http://www.mail-archive.com/ntg-context@ntg.nl/msg62855.html > And BibTeX is used since it understands the semantics of > bib files, although a pure ConTeXt/Lua solution would be possible. > Without BibTeX this functionality would be missing since no one is > willing to implement a parser for .bib databases. Context happens to have such a parser, written in Lua. Probably the best one around: ······································································· \starttext \startluacode local db = bibtex.new() bibtex.load(db, "filename.bib") table.print(db) \stopluacode \stoptext ······································································· Regards Philipp > > If I only had time… > > > Marco > > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ > wiki : http://contextgarden.net > ___________________________________________________________________________________ -- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
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___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
