[Refdb-users] Re: nitpicking (element ordering in risx)

[<Jus...@UL...>]

Hi,

May I join into the discussion:

"Markus Hoenicka" <mar...@mh...> wrote on Fri, 21 Nov
2003 23:52:31 +0100:

> Bruce D'Arcus writes:
>  > I've been working on some input templates for risx for emacs.  The ide=
a=20
>  > is to make entering data much easier than it currently is, since ris i=
s=20
>  > a rather abstract data model.  So, for each variable, the user is=20
>  > prompted for the input with unambiguous prompts: "book title" and so=20
>  > forth.
> ...
> You may then select a suitable mode (M-x ris-mode or M-x psgml-mode or
> whatever you use to edit XML) if you need specific editing support.

Indeed, I am not sure what an input template would provide over and
above psgml-mode. Except: In my local copy of risx.dtd, I made the
citekey and the type #REQUIRED so that psgml-mode prompts for them.

Even better, one could convert the DTD to RELAX NG and use it with
nxml-mode which does XML validation.

Here are some questions and comments about risx.dtd:

- There is no editor element. How do I distinguish between authors and
  editors, say, for a book?

- I think there should be a way to provide a <url> for a conference
  article that's been published in a proceedings volume. This belongs
  into the <part>, I think.

- This may have been answered elsewhere, but I can't remember right
  now: How are full vs. abbreviated journal titles handled by RefDB?

- It would be nice to provide an event address for conferences (which
  is usually different from the publisher's or organization's
  address).

- I think we need a mechanism to protect individual characters against
  automatic case conversion of titles by style sheets (like {G}aussian
  and {HMM} in BibTeX).

- In <libinfo>, why isn't <reprint> optional? Also, the only allowed
  content is <date>, not even #CDATA is permitted. This contradicts
  the RIS specification of the RP field, doesn't it?

- Is there really no established standard for representing references
  in XML? By TEI, for example, or something linked to the Dublin
  Core... And what is the relation of RIS/RISX/RefDB to Bibliofile?

Another issue: I'd like the "master" representation of my references
to be an XML file rather than a data base because that allows me to
choose and change the format as desired. To make this practical, it
would really help if RefDB could optionally identify references by the
citekey instead of by the numeric ID. This would allow me to store
references from different sources in the same RefDB database, and to
update some of them by re-importing manually maintained XML files.

Cheers,
Justus

--=20
Justus H. Piater, Ph.D.         http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~piater/
Institut Montefiore, B28        Phone: +32-4-366-2279
Universit=E9 de Li=E8ge, Belgium    Fax:   +32-4-366-2620