On Jun 14, 2006, at 6:07 PM, Matej Cepl wrote:
That's nice, except that unless you will be done (who will implement
new ODF
citation support in OOo?), you will have no useable bibliographic
support
in OpenOffice.org, no users, and no push on Sun to do something about
it.
Right; chicken-and-egg.
Clearly someone at Sun, and/or a non-Sun person with serious C++ skills
(like CPH) needs to do it.
However, "it" can mean different things. It could mean that Sun
developers, for example, improve the generic infrastructure
(particularly around fields) so that it is easier for outsiders to then
implement the specific code (in this case citations). Indeed, there
has been private discussions about just this with people at Sun, going
back at least a year, if not two. No resolution though (and no news in
fact).
As it is, CPH started implementing the citation improvements without
that enhanced generic support, but got tied up with other (paid) work.
Such is life in open source land.
And then, of ocurse, we had a Google SOC application ready to implement
it, but nobody outside this project voted for it.
On the brighter side, as soon as we get that and the API implemented, I
think things will pick up significantly. But it seems that's sort of a
big initial hill to climb.
I'm sorry, but I feel strongly about this: there is no other reasonable
way. The low-level design is just wrong, and it has to be redone.
To understand what it might mean from a user perspective, go try out
the latest beta of Word 2007. Notwithstanding some of problems I've
noted on the blog, it has a level of integrated elegance that goes far
beyond what is possible with the current OOo code. Want to add a
bibliography? Just select your style from a pull-down list; it's
automatically added. Want to change the citation style? Just select
from another list and everything is reformatted in real-time.
It's not that this stuff is rocket science, and that MS is somehow
brilliant. They took the same approach we have been planning. It's just
that some executive or manager somewhere at MS just said "let's
prioritize higher ed in the next release" and people made it happen.
Bruce
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