X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["4905" "Mon" "7" "December" "92" "23:22:47" "+0100" "David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK" "David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK" nil "91" "LaTeX 3 and bibliographic software" "^Date:" nil nil "12"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (serv01) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/1.9.92 ) id AA02142; Mon, 7 Dec 92 23:33:30 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.0/SMI-4.0-sc/19.6.92) id AA03390; Mon, 7 Dec 92 23:33:26 +0100 Message-Id: <9212072233.AA03390@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3957; Mon, 07 Dec 92 23:33:53 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 7878; Mon, 07 Dec 92 23:33:50 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 7876; Mon, 07 Dec 92 23:33:47 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Mon, 7 Dec 92 23:22:47 +0100 From: David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: LaTeX 3 and bibliographic software Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 900 There are a number of proprietary personal bibliographic systems available, e.g., ProCite, Reference Manager, Library Master, EndNote, Papyrus. If you like, they have features in common with BibTeX but they cost money! So why should anyone pay money for these things when they can have BibTeX, already tailored for LaTeX, free of charge? And why should I take up space in LATEX-L mentioning them? One reason why people may pay money for them is that (generally for extra money!), they have associated software that is designed for downloading bibliographic information from major databases, CD-ROMs, library catalogues, etc. into the end-user's "personal bibliographic database". Another reason may be so that end-users can share bibliographic information with their co-workers. Committed TeXies share .bib files. But, for example, consider the situation at Portsmouth University (where they tend to use ProCite) or Manchester University (where Papyrus is popular): would we want uncommitted end-users to rule LaTeX out (and go for Wordperfect instead) just because they want to keep compatibility with their colleagues' ProCite/Papyrus databases? Or consider an item I saw on some list or other recently where someone was offering a 6500-entry database of references about anatomy of sheep and goats in ProCite format: would we want people who do research into agriculture to rule LaTeX out because they want ProCite compatibility? Other reasons for paying money may be to get database-y features like "find me a paper that has this or that in the title or abstract". Of these reasons, I regard the support for downloading information from major databases, CD-ROMs, library catalogues, etc. as the most important, since this seems like a "growth area". In fact, I've had e-mail from some of the vendors of proprietary software saying that their products can actually work with TeX, so my last-but-two paragraph may have exaggerated the degree of incompatibility. (The general idea is that you tell the proprietary software that LaTeX is "a new wordprocessor", and tell it about how to turn italic on/off, etc.) But my guess is that use of one of the proprietary systems would only be straightforward if you have all your text in one .tex file. I'd guess that, if you have a "root file + \include-d files" arrangement, you'd have problems (whereas BibTeX knows all about .aux files, etc.). So ... Might it be worth entering into dialogues with the producers of ProCite, Reference Manager, Library Master, EndNote, Papyrus, etc., to see whether some common interface could be defined so that they will work nicely with LaTeX 3? Perhaps a command xxxx could be defined such that xxxx root gets the proprietary software to scan root.aux, to find all the \citation{...} commands, and to write root.bbl (like BibTeX would). Perhaps small adjustments at the proprietary end and small adjustments at the LaTeX end would be sufficient. Perhaps it is already possible to write a shell script that gets proprietary software to read a LaTeX 2.09 root.aux and write a root.bbl, and it is just a matter of up-dating the shell script to do the equivalent thing for LaTeX 3.0 (e.g., if LaTeX 3 has something(s) different from \bibitem, etc.) Perhaps the main thing needed is to translate jargon (LaTeX root = Ventura publication = Wordperfect master document; Latex \include-d file = Ventura chapter file = Wordperfect subdocument) so that the vendors can just regard LaTeX 3 support as a variation of something they'd better think about anyway? Perhaps "how to have a bibliography in each chapter" is as much an issue for the proprietary systems as it is for BibTeX, and dialogue over the next 12 months or so could result in support for such things both via BibTeX and via the proprietary systems? Does anyone have hands-on experience of these things? E.g., can anyone say "I've got a shell-script that makes this proprietary system take a LaTeX 2.09 .aux file as input and produce a LaTeX 2.09 .bbl file as output"? The result of "a bit of dialogue and a few small adjustments" COULD be that LaTeX-ers get access to this growth area from day 1 of LaTeX 3. If someone comes along later and produces some public-domain software (e.g., MEDLINE => BibTeX) that gives similar access to major databases, CD-ROMs, library catalogues, etc., so much the better. But a route via the existing proprietary software: * seems more tangible at the moment * doesn't rule out someone producing public-domain software later * could be regarded as devolving tasks like "bibliography style requirements" to people who have more time to spend on such things, so that LaTeX3 people have one less thing to worry about * doesn't seem, in principle, any worse than getting LaTeX to work with proprietary fonts as well as public-domain fonts. Is it worth considering? David Rhead JANET: d.rhead@uk.ac.nott.vme