[Refdb-users] Re: interface mockup

[Bruce D'A. <bd...@fa...>]

On Jan 30, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Matt Price wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:20:34PM -0500, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
>> I don't think this made it to the list.  Any feedback?  I can mod the
>> xslt once I have a better sense of what we want.
> Though I can see that other folks might not want this, I'd like to
> make a plea for a hot-linked title in a short-format list.

So what would happen if you click on the link?

> This is mostly because once you have an <a href> tag, it's possible to 
> write
> fully-functional mycroft search engines for mozilla (see
> http://mycroft.mozdev.org)...

Interesting; I'd not heard about that.  I wonder if the 
browser-agnostic bookmarklet might be better though?  E.g.:

http://webvoy.uwindsor.ca:8080/cocoon/mount/chrysalis/welcome

> So, missing from here is still the code for _adding_ references and
> notes, correct?  How do you think this should be done?

A series of template defined fields that map natural language names to 
underlying metadata model/format.

> Notes should be relatively simple -- the only hard part is getting the
> information into the xml format that refdb uses.  If poss I'd like to
> see this done in xslt again, so that the hard part is abstracted from
> the scripting language and can be recycled in perl/python/whatever.
> Bruce, you're the xslt person, how does that shound to you?

I don't do scripting, so maybe Rob has a better sense of the connection 
between the XML and a form interface.

> 1) this is important -- choosing a reference format.  Do you think risx
> is hte way to go again, or would something simple like bibtex be more
> appropriate?

I despise bibtex myself.  I think the input UI should be designed for 
flexibility; it should work elegantly with risx, but be capable of 
being moved to handling mods data later.  The trick is to define the 
key user input fields in a generic way, and then allow configuration.  
So, the generic fields might be:

creator/editor
title/subtitle
year
publisher
origin place (could be for unpublished sources too)
location
keywords
etc.

> 2) I'm a bit worried about parsing author fields

There's no doubt this is the trickiest part of any form-based UI for 
bib data.  I'm not sure how it ought to work.  Anyone have any ideas?  
Rob?

Bruce