Re: bib amd mods

[Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus.lists@gmail.com>]

Hi Hans,

Hans Hagen <pragma <at> wxs.nl> writes:

> I wonder, is there any interest in the following:
> 
> - support for http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ as basic bibl format

I think Ulf's conclusions are right. MODS is expressive, which is why I was
originally attracted to it, but it's also more complex than it needs to be for
this sort of use case.

The big question becomes, if not MODS, then what? As Ulf pointed out, my
solution -- and the one I will be advocating for OpenDoucment (I am on the TC)
-- is to use a particular RDF serialization. Indeed, I have a draft RELAX NG
schema for it, and my formatting system (citeproc) now works with it quite well.

Microsoft, incidentally, is implementing pretty good bib support (that looks
suspiciously like what I've been advocating for OpenOffice!), which I've blogged
about extensively. Their XML format is not bad, though it is totally flat, which
means it won't be as flexible as MODS or RDF. More here:

<http://netapps.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/darcusb/archives/2006/06/16/flat-vs-relational>

> - provide converters from marcs and bibtex to mods
> - layer the bib module on top of that

Curious question: would you be writing it in Lua (closer to the pdftex level),
or go more high-level (as now)?

> If so, who'd like to join/volunteer for subtasks

I can certainly help with advice and design, particularly if you want to use CSL
to configure the output. I've made some changes to it (again) recently, but
think I'm zeroing in on freezing it. The more feedback I get, the easier it'll
be to do that.

Incidentally, I'm considering the possibility of submitting CSL to OASIS for
standardization, though only if I can get some industry players involved.

Bruce