Re: [EP-underground] The mudtrack ahead

A slower walk-through... in answer to your questions.


* what metadata do you want a user to submit?

Typical things, but let's say authors, title, abstract for now. For
concreteness, here is an author (fictitious), title, abstract taken
from the hep-ph archive at uk.arxiv.org, where the input uses latex
notation.

Authors:

E Schr\"odinger, M Levi-Civit\`a

Title:

$B^- \to K^- \chi_{c0}$ decay from charmed meson rescattering

Abstract:

We study the process $B^- \to K^- \chi_{c0}$ considering intermediate
charmed meson rescattering effects. For this decay mode the naive
factorization ansatz would predict a vanishing amplitude. We estimate
contributions from the $D^{(*)}_{s} D^{(*)}\to K^- \chi_{c0}$
rescattering amplitudes, and compare the result with recent
experimental measurements. We also consider rescattering effects in
$B^- \to K^- J/\psi$.


* how would this be stored in the system?

This is a question I have too. I guess mathematical content would be
in some form of xml (but I know almost nothing about xml), maybe
mathml for now? In any case, it should be something that a machine can
translate easily into various forms (in analogy to image file
conversions all going via a standard intermediate format).


* how would you want it output?

Imagine I want a list of eprints for a cv, a grant application, a
university annual report and so on. Each one wants a different format
(latex, word, ...) and each has its own style (ie authors with
initials first, or initials last, etc). I'd like to ask for output to
come as any of a web page, a bibtex file, a latex document, a word
document and so on, and if possible, I might be able to specify the
style too.

Things like your latex formula renderer are a start, but once you've
converted a formula to an image it's hard to process the information
any further except with eyes and a brain.


I realise this is asking a lot, but even partial solutions will help.
On the other hand, maybe an answer would be that eprints simply
outputs xml and it's up to other applications that use this
output to filter into their own format. It's not eprints' job to
accomodate everyone's favourite document processing system. However,
the ability to import from a variety of formats would be nice since
the more important ideal is to have the stored information handled
in a uniform way.


-- 
Jonathan Flynn                [email protected]
Dept Physics & Astronomy           tel +44 (0)23 8059 2081
University of Southampton          fax +44 (0)23 8059 3910
Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ   www.hep.phys.soton.ac.uk