Re: About the AV and L1 fields

Hallöchen!

Markus Hoenicka writes:

> Quoting Torsten Bronger <[email protected]>:
>
>> I'd like to store non-URL location information in the
>> bibliographic datasets, e.g. "a printed copy is available in the
>> office of Dr. Meier".  This should be *global* information,
>> i.e. not only available to a single user.
>>
>> The AV tag is only available to one user.  While the RefDB
>> tutorial says that only N1, AV, and RP are personal, the manual
>> suggests that this is also true for L2.  Besides, L2 seem to
>> store only URLs.  However, I don't really know, as RIS itself is
>> very poorly specified.
>>
>> I don't want to waste a valuable U1..U5 field for this.  So can I
>> use L2?
>
> Basically yes. To the best of my knowledge refdbd does not check
> whether the contents of L2 look like an URL. [...]

But is L2 a personal or a global field?  According to the manual,
they "hold information which is stored for each user separately".

The RISX DTD has <link> tags in both the pubinfo (global) and the
libinfo (personal) elements.

> However, there used to be a more ingenous way to handle this. The
> get_reprint() backend function takes a username as an argument
> (among others). [...] This would give each user a chance to locate
> at least one copy, regardless of who provided the
> information. This mechanism has the advantage that each user can
> still request his own availability if needed.

This sounds neat, however, it would not help me because I need three
things: a global link to a file, a local link to a file, and a
real-world place of an offprint.  It is so complicated because some
collegues need personal copies of PDFs in order to write notes in
the PDF file.  (Weird.)

Currently, I use the extension fields like this:

U1: globally set relevance, from "*" to "*****"
U2: global notes, in Markdown syntax
U3: relative path to the PDF on the central server
U4: locations of printed copies
M1: comma-separated list of Django group IDs to which this reference
    belongs
M2: "1" for "institute publication", "0" for "not".


The distinction between "U" and "M" is that I may use extended notes
for "M" someday when I have too much time.  ;-)  Furthermore:


RP: can never be "on request"
AV: link to the personal file for the user on the central server
N1: personal notes, in Markdown syntax

> [...]
>
> - use yet another switch for the getref command that consolidates  
> personal information if the current user does not have any.

This sounds more explicit so I would prefer this.  But again, do it
only if you see a real use case.  I am not such a case because I
need a clearly defined fallback to the *central* PDF if the user's
AV is empty.  Besides, I need a PDF link and an offprint location.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus
                   Jabber ID: [email protected]


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