On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 4:13 AM, Bruce D'Arcus <[email protected]> wrote: > First, thanks to those of you that attended the call. I've kind of been > slammed this term. > > Second, can we step back a bit and talk high-level vision? So, for example > ... > > Frank, from a user perspective, what sorts of scenarios would your proposal > enable?
Pre-flight vetting of submissions could be automated at the first stage. The idea would be to provide something similar to Amazon CreateSpace (but for freely distributed styles, of course): https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?cid=02n70000000DfLw&orgId=00D300000001Sh9 (Scroll down to the link "What are the book setup steps?") > > Make it much easier for style editors to manage style additions and changes? > So much so that it would open up style editing to a much wider range of > users? The focus is on pruning and curating code in the repository, to reduce the burden of maintaining what's there. A more compact code base and an automated workflow for managing submissions would make it possible to broaden the circle of maintainers. That seems to be a critical objective at the moment. The proposal is just a thought, though, as a possible research-fundraising-friendly path to automated submission pre-flight. > > Something else? > > Bruce > > > On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 6:07 AM, Frank Bennett <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Sebastian Karcher >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Hi, >> > >> > last Thursday, Rintze, Frank, and I had a conference call with Alex >> > Garnett and Juan Pablo Alperin of the Public Knowledge Project >> > http://pkp.sfu.ca . >> > We wanted to explore if (and if so how) CSL could find an >> > institutional host at the PKP and what that would entail. Generally >> > the conversation was very positive, the PKP folks know CSL and >> > actually have started using it in one of their projects. They seemed >> > quite positive about the general prospect of providing a home to CSL. >> > They don't have much in terms of developer time to offer, but said >> > that short term some advice and time for grant writing would be >> > possible. They said they would want to be included in some way in the >> > CSL decision-making process, though more in terms of knowing what's >> > going on than to influence decisions (we did describe said process as >> > open and consensus-based, which they seemed fine with). As for grants, >> > as other have said, they said that it's basically impossible to get >> > grants to cover day-to-day operations. Grant institutions want to fund >> > something specific and new, so we'd have to think about that. Rintze >> > and I came up with three areas on the spot: >> > 1. Specifications - while the syntax is well specified, all the little >> > things like eliminating double spaces/punctuation etc. that the >> > processors do (or not) isn't. It should be >> > 2. Legal CSL - incorporating Frank's modification for legal support >> > 3. Other CSL 1.1/2.0 developments including field updates, potential >> > multilingual improvements etc. >> > Perhaps the biggest concern in all of this is that Rintze and I don't >> > see how this is going to reduce our work (which, after all, was one of >> > the original reasons we started talking about this). >> >> That's a big one. >> >> I had an idea today, though, that might catch both objectives. Here's >> the pitch. I think it's as original as casting the CSL editor. See >> what you think about the idea, though. >> >> *** >> >> CSL is a carefully designed language. The potential for CSL to become >> a de facto standard for defining and automating document referencing >> formats has been proven through performance: several implementations >> of the language are running in the wild, and user-contributed styles >> have brought the CSL Style Repository to 800+ styles covering 4000+ >> journals. Major projects, including Mendeley, Papers and Zotero rely >> upon the language to serve a large user community, many working in >> research or at the PhD level. >> >> In the community's drive to satisfy user needs, the focus has been on >> individual styles. This has spread attention across an expanding >> codebase, slowing efforts to refine and improve styles across the >> archive as a whole. >> >> This challenge can be addressed by drawing upon a latent potential for >> modularity in CSL that has not heretofore played a part in style >> maintenance and distribution. At the most basic level, CSL cleanly >> separates four elements of style design: >> >> * Citation formats >> * Citation format parameters >> * Bibliography formats >> * Bibliography format parameters >> >> Although each style in the CSL Style Repository is currently stored as >> an atomic unit, each is composed of these four elements, and they can >> easily be separated and remixed, resulting in a smaller base of code, >> higher quality in many styles, and potential for more rapid coverage >> of remaining publisher and university styles. There is deeper >> potential for modularity in CSL (through a shared macro library). >> Implementing this simple modular break-out in the current repository >> infrastructure will make it possible to explore those avenues in >> future. >> >> Moving to a modular archive design would require the following: >> >> * Style-level test suites to confirm current style behaviour; >> * Tools for breaking out the current code base: >> - Separating current styles into citation-format and >> bibliography-format elements for separate validation; >> - Extracting and storing bibliography and citation format IDs and >> parameters on a per-style basis. >> * Tools for exploring commonalities between citation and >> bibliography formats, and merging IDs; >> * A middle layer for recombining styles from modular code and >> testing the result. >> >> For simplicity, this back-office functionality should be masked from >> users and style designers, who understand CSL styles (either when >> using the CSL editor, or when directly editing style XML) as >> integrated units. Accordingly, archive modularisation should be >> accompanied by a maintenance layer performing two functions: >> >> * Automated pre-flight checks for schema validity and correct and >> complete style metadata; >> * Arbitration with the modular repo back-end, with heuristic >> identification and merger of citation and bibliography formats; and >> * User-facing and maintainer-facing UI to drive these facilities. >> >> *** >> >> Frank >> >> >> > >> > I'll send a separate e-mail tomorrow with a brief proposal on the >> > framework for a PKP-CSL partnership, but wanted to get this out there >> > for both information and discussion. >> > Best, >> > Sebastian >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Sebastian Karcher >> > Ph.D. Candidate >> > Department of Political Science >> > Northwestern University >> > >> > >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> > Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced >> > analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for >> > building >> > apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use >> > our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account! >> > http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter >> > _______________________________________________ >> > xbiblio-devel mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced >> analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building >> apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use >> our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account! >> http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter >> _______________________________________________ >> xbiblio-devel mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced > analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building > apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use > our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. 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