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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: DOCBOOK: Announce: BibTex for Docbook


On Tuesday 03 September 2002 21:50, Markus Hoenicka wrote:
> for people interested in a comparison between JReferences and RefDB
> I'd suggest to go back in the list archives about 1 year. We had a
> funny discussion back then.
>
> I haven't tested any recent releases of JReferences, but from what
> I've gathered from the current discussion I see the following main
> issues that set RefDB apart from JReferences:
>
> - RefDB works with DocBook XML and SGML documents, TEI XML documents,
>   and LaTeX documents (with somewhat limited capabilities). Other
>   SGML/XML document types can be added without modification of RefDB
>   itself (just some stylesheet hacking).

Yes, that is a current advantage of RefDB.

> - RefDB does *not* require any changes in the DTDs. Documents remain
>   valid against the stock DTDs, so using RefDB does not create an
>   interchange issue.

In the next version JReferences will not require that too (thanx to Jirka 
Kosek's ideas).

> - RefDB does not modify the SGML/XML source document. The bibliography
>   is created as an external entity. The citations (which are actually
>   xref elements) are rendered by pulling in the appropriate
>   information from the bibliography element and are hyperlinked (in
>   HTML and PDF output) to the corresponding references in the
>   bibliography. The advantage of not modifying the source document is
>   that reformatting the document for a different bibliography style is
>   a snap.

JReferences does change the doc, but that is easy to change... Might be an 
advantage too sometimes...

> - RefDB uses a bibliography style database to render citations and
>   bibliographies according to a specific style of a publisher or of a
>   publication. This includes aspects like the sequence of the elements
>   (authors, year, title, journal, volume, issue, pages...), the
>   rendering of the author names (FM Last, F.M. Last, F. M. Last,
>   Last,F.M. and all other permutations), as well as the rendering in
>   the output formats (volume bold or italics, journal names regular or
>   italics etc). Both author/year and numeric citation styles are
>   supported. The styles are defined as XML documents.

A tie?

> - In addition to the document-based bibliography output, RefDB can
>   generate raw bibliographies in DocBook SGML/XML, TEI XML, RIS,
>   BibTeX and a few other formats.

JReferences supports BibTeXML, DocBook, BibTeX at this moment only.

> - RefDB is a multi-user system. Users can share a common reference
>   database and still maintain their personal info (notes, reprint status,
>   availability etc).
>
> - RefDB uses a SQL database to store the references. The current
>   stable branch uses MySQL, the development branch in CVS uses MySQL
>   or PostgreSQL. Support for an embedded SQL library is in preparation.

These two are the reason why I continued JReferences after that discussion
about a year ago. I still think RefDB is an excellent program, but not if you 
do not have a MySQL server around...

> - RefDB uses scriptable command-line clients as well as a web
>   interface. This offers both a convenient graphical interface and the
>   power of unix plumbing.

True. JReferences will have a editor in the future.

> - RefDB can store far more information per reference than actually is
>   used to display the reference. Additional information includes
>   an unlimited number of keywords, an URL to an electronic offprint,
>   personal notes, availability information (where is that paper
>   copy?), abstracts etc. This greatly simplifies retrieving the proper
>   references and maintaining a large collection of paper or electronic
>   offprints.

JReferences supports this too by using BibTeXML file database...
Many ways to do it...

> - RefDB can directly import RIS (the lingua franca of Windows
>   reference databases), BibTeX and DocBook (with a little stylesheet
>   tweaking) references. TEI import is in preparation.

JReferences support import of RIS, BibTeX, DocBook and BibTeXML.

> Therefore I wouldn't support the notion that RefDB and JReferences are
> "similar" but the decision is left to those who actually use and
> compare both apps.

The purpose is similar, and that was meant I think...

> To see the RefDB bibliography capabilities at work, I suggest to visit:

Anyone should do that. Its good software.

> http://refdb.sourceforge.net/examples.html


Egon


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