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A reference system that support BibTeX databases
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Description

Author: madsmh

Description:
A system that would allow the easy (automated) creation of
refernces (to books or webpages) along with bibliography,
with support for BiBTeX databases would be awesome.


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz423

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Lowest.Nov 21 2014, 7:09 PM
bzimport added a project: Cite.
bzimport set Reference to bz423.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

gremio wrote:

I'm glad I'm not the first to think of this. In reality, what I think I would
want is this: (and I'm willing to help)

  • articles in a special format that has a bib entry on top, and with pdf-link,

ps-link, doc-link, etc. BibTeX fields to show where the original document can be
found. Of course these really are just articles, and can be edited as usual.

  • a new bib: namespace that will link to articles and if it finds bib

information, then it formats "[bib:key]" by default as "<u>title</u>.
<i>authors</i> publication-short-name year (link-to-pdf) (link-to-other-format)
(link-to-yet-another-format)" or some user-specified format.

  • Special Page to view just the BibTex parts of all the bib articles at once

(for copy-paste to a .bib file)

  • Buttons on bib pages to open a new browser window and find the article on

Google Scholar, CiteSeer, etc.

  • Special Page to import from Google Scholar, CiteSeer, etc.

I'm totally willing to put in some time to making this happen, but I am new to
MediaWiki, and to php, and don't even know what mailing lists I should be asking
questions on. (I've installed php-mode.el and have started digging around. a
bit.) Help?

Thanks,
Grem

gremio wrote:

And as I'm thinking about it, also a separate [cite:foo] namespace that would be
formatted as (Author YEAR), and link to the full [bib:foo] at the bottom, where
those would be accumulated and displayed in alphabetical order by author, as
usual at the bottom of articles.

I totally see this as a public scholarly discourse medium of the future: Want a
good argument against creationism being taught in schools? Want a scholarly
history avec bibliography of France? Want a scholarly introduction to the
relevant literature on Natural Language Question Answering? Check it on this
wiki page, and track its changes, and have largish groups contribute to it.

This is happening now, except for the ability to cite sources cleanly. This
relates to Bug 800 in that we could pioneer a bibtex entry format (including
datestamp) for wiki pages.

madsmh wrote:

Thanks for your imput. My ambition is to create a site with social science
research and a system that make refernces as painless as possible would be very
usefull.

  • Mads

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

new extension, 'copy' of cite.php, with bibtex enhancement

This is a working version of a bibtex enhancement of the cite.php. It is
ABSOLUTELY not a perfect system, but before patching on, I think I should make
this one visible to the public, and maybe allow it for further discussion.
Things to be done:

  • Error handling (hardly anything at the moment)
  • Maybe move code into cite.php, so not a standalone extension, or make this an

extension of the cite class from cite.php?

  • Discuss how to format references that are loaded from a bibtex format
  • Security checks
  • Performance checks (this thing may be very slow)

(and maybe more).

  • Other formats (RIS-files?)

attachment bibtex tryal.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

new extension, 'copy' of cite.php, with bibtex enhancement

This is a working version of a bibtex enhancement of the cite.php. It is
ABSOLUTELY not a perfect system, but before patching on, I think I should make
this one visible to the public, and maybe allow it for further discussion.
Things to be done:

  • Error handling (hardly anything at the moment)
  • Maybe move code into cite.php, so not a standalone extension, or make this an

extension of the cite class from cite.php?

  • Discuss how to format references that are loaded from a bibtex format
  • Security checks
  • Performance checks (this thing may be very slow)

(and maybe more).

  • Other formats (RIS-files?)

attachment bibtex tryal.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

For those who want to see a working copy, see http://chemistry.poolspares.com/wiki/Text

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Functionality as a patch for cite.php

Should be the same as the other patch, but patched into cite.php

attachment cite.bibref ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

New version of patch, some enhancement in comparison with the previous version:

  • Error handling
  • formatting references slightly adapted
  • removed quite some php-errors
  • extended working of biblio tag
  • security improved (should be ok now, system similar to cite.php

Still need to be done:
+ other formats (but that is not important for the working)
+ internationalisation

IMPORTANT: This patch needs a performance test. It might be that with large "external" BibTeX pages, mediawiki performance is affected.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX patch for cite.php

Internationalisation added. For further info, see comment #8

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

I think that this is a fabulous idea, but in the wrong place.

Rather than spatchcocking it into [[m:Cite/Cite.php]] and subverting the <ref> tags, I
feel that it would be better to create a new independent set of tags which could work
orthogonally with <ref> and <references/>.

There are still people who prefer not to work with <ref> who would be very interested
in these BibTeX tags: surely it would make more sense to make them independent.

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Addition of BibTeX functionality, and a new working variety of ref

  1. Further tweak of BibTeX
  2. Added an 'other way around' functionality. <bibtex store> or <biblio store>

creates a table of references, which can be used in the text to create an
inline reference with a new tag <bibref>.

Still needs:

  • Performance checking
  • Code clean up
  • Security check (though I think it is OK)
  • optimisation of the output-code (functions parseBibTeX and parseBibRef (are

now generating a template call, while the template may not exist).

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

code cleanup and removal of some errors in bibtex functionality

Upgraded version. Former comments still true.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Almost the same as the previous, without annoying whitespace patching and with
repair of some small errors. For comments, see earlier patches

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX patch for cite.php

One major error in 2661, resolved.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX and BibRef functionality for cite.php

Added format, removed some errors. Ready for a review (escpecially
performance).

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX patch for cite.php

Adapted the i18n with newer reference formatting. For further comments see my
earlier additions.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Changed some things in the files after recommendations from Brion, and removed
a bug. For rest see comments above.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Removed some small errors, better internationalisation (BibliographyReader now
does his own), rest similar to above.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Added error messages for empty inputs, made error messages more informative,
BibTeX fields from other page are now loaded only from within the tagset (see
http://chemistry.poolspares.com, lower half of main page). Further comments as
above.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

newer version, some minor glitches removed, code cleanup, and bibref now reads
bibtex fields as well. Further comments, see above

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

More errors gone, see comments above

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Cleaning up using exceptions

attachment cite.diff ignored as obsolete

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

removed wrongly str_replace, wfMsg takes parameter. also changed wfMsg to
wfMsgForContent.

attachment cite.diff ignored as obsolete

BibTeX functionality patch for cite.php

Moved around the code a bit, introduce private and public functions/variables.

attachment cite.diff ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Bibtex and footnote functionality for cite.php

Moved the code around, and generalised the use of the code (numbering can now
be adapted to users preference).

This allows for using the same cite-mechanism for footnotes (which are
different from the references). <references/> gets used at the bottom of the
document (as usual, the functionality for bibtex is only available for the
ref/references tagset), <footnotes/> can be used on a per-section basis, for
separate comments. The contents for the footnotes gets reset every time when
<footnotes/> gets called.

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

small adaption of last patch

Changed generator for tags, now independent of array-size (for custom tags)

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Bibtex and footnote functionality for cite.php

Removed 4 bugs and 1 error (found while writing a manual at
http://chemistry.poolspares.com/wiki/CiteManual).

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Bibtex and footnote functionality for cite.php

(updated patch, old patch conflicted with patch in bug 7908)

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Bibtex and footnote functionality for cite.php

(resolving patch conflict with 19203)

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Bibtex and footnote functionality for cite.php

(remove conflict)

attachment cite.patch ignored as obsolete

Beetstra.wiki wrote:

Disregard last patch, contains a serious design-flaw (cite.php may loose it's capability of counting
consistently).

*Bulk BZ Change: +Patch to open bugs with patches attached that are missing the keyword*

Unassigning this bug, as there is no assignee.

James, when you say "in the future, I would like VisualEditor to autofill references automatically" (or something similar), are you considering the approach proposed here as a possibility?

In other words, is there a future for this old request in our plans?

(In reply to Quim Gil from comment #35)

James, when you say "in the future, I would like VisualEditor to autofill
references automatically" (or something similar), are you considering the
approach proposed here as a possibility?

In other words, is there a future for this old request in our plans?

Not as written, though I imagine export to BibTeX format would be a fairly trivial enhancement onto such a system.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 11:02 AM
Aklapper removed a subscriber: wikibugs-l-list.