First of all - yay! Bruce is much better on the higher level conceptual questions, but as one of the couple of people who have so far coded most of the existing styles allow me some input. A lot of the work in writing a good CSL style actually is not spent on the coding, but on thinking about the structure of the citation style: How does it work systematically? What happens when an item type misses one or multiple fields? How about item types that I may not have addressed specifically, how should those work? Figuring that type of stuff out and writing high quality (i.e. reliable and robust) citation styles isn't trivial, most certainly not for someone who has never thought about such technicalities (I know - my first CSL styles were pretty bad in that respect).
What that means is that essentially GUIfying the CSL logic is very likely going to lead to a bunch of poorly coded styles, even if the editor algorithm behind the GUI is good. This all basically a rambling form of strong support for Bruce's suggestion of rethinking how a style editor should work. Doing something along the lines suggested by Bruce may also mean that incorporating Frank Bennett's Feedback Gadget - http://citationstylist.org/tools/ - would come natural and we could easily implement test-suited for styles that keep them working well during/after revisions. Best, Sebastian On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Jeffrey Lancaster <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > > > I wanted to write the list today to introduce myself and also to let you > all know about a project that has recently been funded by the Sloan > Foundation to develop a prototype CSL editor. > > > > My name is Jeffrey Lancaster and I’m the Emerging Technologies > Coordinator at the Science & Engineering Library at Columbia University. As > we figure out what the heck that job title even means, one of the things > I’ve been able to do is to pursue opportunities to collaborate with > developers (both internal and external) to develop technologies that we > think will be beneficial to our university community, the larger academic > community, and the public in general. > > > > I’m writing today to let you know that we recently received a grant from > the Sloan Foundation to collaborate with Mendeley in order to develop a > prototype visual CSL editor. While many of the specifics of the prototype > are still up in the air as we begin development, I wanted to solicit the CSL > community for your input throughout the process so that the product of our > collaboration is useful to you. This will be especially useful since > Mendeley has already attempted such an editor before and is looking forward > to improving upon that previous effort. The code that we develop will be > deposited into an open-source repository throughout the project, so please > feel free to follow along and submit suggestions if you’re so inclined. > While we may not necessarily be able to adopt all suggestions, it’s > important to us that the process is inclusive so the product will be useful > to you all. > > > > For this project, I’m coordinating the outreach and assessment components > while Ian Mulvany at Mendeley has taken the lead on the development. Please > feel free to send me email directly ([email protected]) with > suggestions that we can include in our development effort. As a heads up, > toward the end of the prototype effort, I’ll again be in touch to ask for > your help in evaluating and assessing the CSL editor in order to gather > information that can be used to further development either in a subsequent > grant or by independent developers. We’ll also soon send out a link to a > webpage where you can follow the progress of the project, submit feedback, > etc. > > > > This is something we’re very excited about pursuing, and I look forward > to hearing from the list about what you might like to see in a visual, > wysiwyg-ish CSL editor. > > > > Thanks! > > > > --Jeffrey > > > > p.s. Press releases such as this one > (http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=345494) describing the > project have also recently been published and will be linked to from a > forthcoming webpage. > > -- > Jeffrey Lancaster > Emerging Technologies Coordinator > 404 Northwest Corner Building, Science and Engineering Library, Columbia > University > mailcode: 4899 > phone: 212.851.7138 > - Digital Science Center > - Science and Engineering Library Blog > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! > The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers > is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, > Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d > _______________________________________________ > xbiblio-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel > -- ------ Sebastian Karcher Ph.D. Candidate Department of Political Science Northwestern University ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ xbiblio-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel
