From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/28711 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bruce D'Arcus Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: bib amd mods Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:40:53 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <44980372.1000108@wxs.nl> <44982E1F.6000003@web.de> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1150825624 10603 80.91.229.2 (20 Jun 2006 17:47:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:47:04 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Tue Jun 20 19:47:03 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1FskJB-000405-Nh for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:38 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B840127A3; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:37 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 12332-07-2; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:27 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3495D1278E; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:27 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6284F12780 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:22 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 12332-07 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:46:17 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with SMTP id CB0FC127A3 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:41:20 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1FskDu-0003AI-5y for ntg-context@ntg.nl; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:41:10 +0200 Original-Received: from cpe-24-210-249-184.woh.res.rr.com ([24.210.249.184]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:41:10 +0200 Original-Received: from bdarcus.lists by cpe-24-210-249-184.woh.res.rr.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:41:10 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-To: ntg-context@ntg.nl Original-Lines: 72 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 24.210.249.184 (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060214 Camino/1.0) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.7 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:28711 Archived-At: Ulf Martin web.de> writes: > I think the crucial point for any TeX community is the ability to use > the rather huge amount of BibTeX legacy DBs. > > How about the state of CSL (or RDF) to BibTeX converters? I don't care about BibTeX myself, so such things aren't my focus. However, I think a good XML/RDF data format makes it pretty easy to downconvert to formats like BibTeX. Indeed, it took me 30 minutes or so to write a decent XSLT to convert MODS to the RDF/XML I'm using. That was only targeted at book descriptions, so it would take more time for a comprehensive version, but it shows it's not hard. The hard part, in fact, is the logic for conversion, and most of that is clearly documented in the bibutils source code. > bibutils uses MODS as its native intermediate format and converts from > and to BibTeX (not always 100% correct, though). Correct, though it's actually more complicated than that. It uses a C-based internal format that is based on lessons from MODS and from converting the other legacy formats. > Summary > ------- > > So, at present we already have: > > (1) MODS <-(bibutils)-> BibTeX -(bibmod)-> ConTeXt > > For an XML-based format in a ConTeXt context we would like to have: > > (2) BibTeX <-(a)-> XML -(b)-> ConTeXt *We* wouldn't include me. I deal much more with RIS or Endnote formats than I do with BibTeX. But I don't use ConTeXt for authoring either ;-) > using the rather nice XML processing capabilities of ConTeXt for > step (b). > > Now, there is an XML markup for BibTeX: BibTeXML > http://bibtexml.sourceforge.net/ > This isn't too bad, in my experience (it is, at least, lossless, > contrary to bibutils). Thus > > (3) BibTeX <-(bibtexml)-> BibTeXML -(b')-> ConTeXt > > would be an instance of (2). Yes, but BibTeXML still has all the problems of the BibTeX model. > CSL could use XSL transformer: > > (4) BibTeXML <-(XSLT)-> CSL -(b")-> ConTeXt All CSL is is a language-angostic XML config language. You could write a CSL engine in whatever language you want: TeX, Lua, Perl, Ruby, C. *I* wrote mine in XSLT 2.0, but that's mostly because of limited skills with other langauges. I also designed citeproc, BTW, to have both an input and output driver system. So while I use an RDF/XML representation internally, it wouldn't be too hard to write other inout drivers. A next-generation mbib module probably ought to do the same, so that while it might have a richer core format, it could still be fed BibTeX, or even MODS. Bruce