[Refdb-users] ANN: refdb-0.9.4-pre2 available for testing

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Hi,

I've uploaded a new prerelease to:

http://refdb.sourceforge.net/pre/refdb-0.9.4-pre2.tar.gz

This is a truly experimental release to test the new extended notes
capabilities. If you have some spare time left, please toy around with
this release and report any glitches and suggestions.

This prerelease required substantial changes in the database
layouts. It was designed to run in parallel with a 0.9.3 or 0.9.4-pre1
installation. Please make sure to read the installation instructions
below to keep your existing data accessible.

The extended notes allow to add notes to database items like records,
authors, periodicals. Each note may link to any number of these items,
and in turn e.g. each record may be attached to any number of
notes. See below for a brief description of the commands to deal with
these notes. The Perlclient module was not yet updated to make use of
this new functionality.


Bugfixes:
- fixed bug that prevented periodical entries from being updated
  properly
- RIS and risx author names are now normalized identically
- fixed segfault in bib creation for empty authorlists
- fixed refdbctl stop if refdbd runs longer than one day

Improvements:
- added support for additional RIS fields L1-L4
- added support for additional fields in the stylesheet driver files
- TEI bibliographies are now created using an XSLT stylesheet
- corporate names are preserved as such and can be exported using risx
- added switch to refdbd that refuses connections except from localhost
- added support for extended notes


Installation instructions
=========================

In order to allow this prerelease to run in parallel with a stable
0.9.3 or 0.9.4-pre1 release, the system database was renamed to refdb
(instead of refdb1). When following the installation instructions in
the manual, please use refdb instead of refdb1 when creating the
system database.

It is recommended not to "make install" before thinking twice. If you
want your existing installation to remain functional, it is necessary
to rename at least your existing copy of /usr/local/bin/refdbd (you
may later rename the new one and rename the old one back). The new
clients are supposed to work with the older servers.

To actually run two versions of refdbd in parallel, assign one of them
a port other than the default 9734. Provide this port to each client
on the command line as appropriate.

To move your existing data over to the new database layout, export all
datasets using your existing installation:

refdbc: getref -t risx -o all.xml :ID:>0

Then use addref to add the datasets to a fresh database using the new
0.9.4-pre2 installation:

refdba: createdb newdb

refdbc: addref -t risx all.xml

Extended notes instructions
===========================

dtd/xnote.dtd is a simple dtd describing an extended note. There is an
example note in examples/xnoteset.xml.

The basic idea is to provide a note (this is currently a #PCDATA
string but could be extended in future versions) along with a title,
citation key, and keywords which facilitate housekeeping. The link
elements allow to attach the note to any number of references (via
their citation keys), authors, keywords, or periodicals. Each note is
attached to the current user.

Managing notes involves these new refdbc commands (use the built-in
help for syntax hints):
addnote: adds the notes from an XML file
updatenote: updates existing notes with copies in an XML file
deletenote: removes a note and the associated links from the database
getnote: runs a query to locate notes (:ID:, :CK:, :KW:, :TI:, :JO:,
:JF:, :J1:, :J2:, :PY: are supposed to work as field specifiers)

The similarity to the equivalent *ref commands should be obvious.

In addition, the getref command allows two new field specifiers :NID:
and :NCK: to find references which are attached to a particular note
as specified by its ID or citation key.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de