[sword-devel] Bibtex for modules

[DM Smith]

A couple of thoughts on this thread. I agree with many thoughts and will 
repeat them, unattributed, here:
* Our goal is spiritual (to extend His Kingdom) and our conversation 
should be seasoned with salt, edifying and godly.
* A single entry of bibliographic data is a good thing. While we try to 
be accurate in our representation of a module, we do make mistakes from 
time to time. These should be attributable to us. Sometimes, our source 
has mistakes and this should be attributable to them. This deals with 
the "provenance" of the module.
* It does not matter what that form is. What matters is that it is 
useful. Will a single format be universally useful? No.
* The SWORD engine could make that form useful in the same way that 
different render filters make a SWORD module useful to different 
rendering engines. This probably is not actually needed if the chosen 
format is widely useful.
* The chosen form should have an open source parser so we don't have to 
grow our own, if it is ever needed.

Couple of new thoughts (i.e. mine):
* The key in the conf for such an entry should be implementation 
neutral. The documentation (i.e. the conf's wiki page) should document 
the expected format. If needed, add another key that declares the format.
* Having a bibliographic entry in the conf, while good, should be 
entirely optional.
* The construction of a Bibtex entry looks error prone. Having a web 
page that can construct an entry from input would be good.
* Having a good bibliographic format could allow us to deprecate some 
bibliographic entries in the conf.
* BibTeX seems like a good choice. In addition to the arguments for it: 
BibTeX is 25+ years old. It is useful to those using LaTeX.

In Him,
     DM


On 01/14/2011 12:50 PM, Trevor Jenkins wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Peter von Kaehne<refdoc at gmx.net>  wrote:
>
>>> b) How does an end user refomat a specific citation from obtained from
>>> Sword converted to another format?
>> Absolutely any and every open source bibliographic software can handle
>> BibTeX - at least as import format, if not as native format. Most can
>> also export into other formats.
> Yes indeed any and every open source bibliographic software can but not
> everyone uses them. Indeed the most frequently used bibliographic package
> installed out there amongst the market is neither open source nor handles
> BibTeX. EndNote is by far the market leader and it does not accept BibTeX
> (probably deliberately on the part of ThompsonReuters). To make an
> assumption about what users actually have to hand is a gross
> generalisation. Not everyone is as committed to open source or is
> permitted to be. When I returned to univeristy, as a mature student, a ew
> years ago the expectation was that all 10,000 students in the univeristy
> would use EndNote. There was no mention of any open source products at
> all. Installation of unapproved software is a dismissable offence.
>
> Regards, Trevor
>
> <><  Re: deemed!
>
>
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