Re: RefDB + Bibtex +URLs + chapter + booktitle + incollection

Gidday Markus

Markus Hoenicka wrote:
> 
> Damien Jade Duff writes:
>  > (1)
>  > 
>  > Is there any way to get a URL field in the bibtex results?
>  > 
> 
> Retrieving URLs and L1-L4 is a bit tricky because each reference can
> contain more than one of each type, that's why there was no obvious
> solution for doing it yourself. I've added some code that retrieves
> all UR and L1-L4 entries and outputs them as URL lines. That is, the
> distinction between the link types currently gets lost, but I don't
> know how this could be preserved in bibtex. I'm not even sure whether
> "URL" is the correct way to encode an URL in bibtex.

My version of bibtex makes use of a URL field anyway. Thanks for making 
that change - it should be fine for most purposes, and I should be able 
to hack it around if necessary now that there is code in there to 
retrieve and write URLS.

>  > (2)
>  > 
>  > The @INBOOK bibtex citation type requires a CHAPTER rather than a TITLE 
>  > field and a TITLE rather than a BOOKTITLE field - the three levels here are:
>  > 1. CHAPTER
>  > 2. TITLE
>  > 3. SERIES
>  > 
> 
> I think I've fixed that.
> 
>  > (3)
>  > 
>  > The @BOOK bibtex citation type also requires a TITLE rather than a 
>  > BOOKTITLE field.
>  > 
> 
> I think I've fixed that too.
> 

Thanks Markus - I can't see it on the CVS web interface though - does 
this mean it's not uploaded or does it mean I'm not using the web properly?

>  > (4)
>  > 
>  > 
> 
> Is it correct that in an INBOOK entry
> the chapter author is also the editor of the whole book, whereas in an
> INCOLLECTION entry the author and the editor are different persons?

That seems to be the case.

> This seems to be a distinction that RIS does not make. But then I
> wonder why you would use INBOOK anyway. I'd rather think that you put
> the whole book into the reference list and add the chapter information
> into the in-text citation (RefDB doesn't handle this yet though).

Maybe bibtex could potentially handle that as bibtex takes the bibtex 
entry and forms both the in-text citation and the reference... I don't 
know how it works... I would expect bibtex to handle that part of it. 
One wonders how original native RIS applications choose to handle 
references to chapters in non-edited books; probably by checking for the 
presence of an editor when forming the reference and citation from the 
data. I guess bibtex just tries to make that explicit by introducing a 
new citation type.

The easiest thing to do if you don't want to worry about the difference 
between @INBOOK and @INCOLLECTION at this point is just to change RefDB 
to create @INCOLLECTION bibtex where before it created @INBOOK bibtex. 
(i.e. so that RefDB never creates @INBOOK bibtex).
This is because the @INBOOK citation type specifies EITHER editor or 
author, but not both. In my experiments with the harvard/dcu bibtex 
style (and presumably this applies to other styles too), bibtex ignores 
the editor information if author information exists in an @INBOOK entry.
@INCOLLECTION is far more commonly used in my references, and in the 
absence of an editor I believe most bibtex styles will just ommit the 
editor from the reference - the chapter information will not end up in 
the in-text citation as you suggest it should be but at least there is a 
place to put the editor if necessary.

Thanks again for your time
Damien


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language
that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast
and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory!
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642