Re: Robert -- Re: OT: End Note ?

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Patricia M. Godfrey"
 on Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:26:02 -0400


> Devising a properly structured, normalized database for
> citations is fiendishly difficult, given the variations possible
> (1, 2, 3, or more authors; authors and editors; single- or
> multi-volume works; works in series; book, journal article, or
> monograph; Eng. language trans. of other-language work; etc.,
> etc., etc.) IF (much virtue in an if) somebody else has already
> done that, more power to him, her, or them.

Can't you just filch the database structure that one of these
programs has already devised? The difficulty is devising the
template -- the "fields" or blanks that user needs to fill in.
Once you have this structure, it's a pretty simple matter to use
XPL to create a fill-in form that reflects this structure, and
to create a database (really nothing more than a text file, with
each "record" or citation terminated by a carriage return, and
each "field" within a record separated by a tab or whatever...).
When you need to retrieve a citation, you CAll the file and
SEarch it, then grab the target record and parse the fields in
it.

As for the style, how hard can that be? Aren't we just talking
about order & punctuation? You create a few "rules": Chicago 1
presents the info fields in order X, using punctuation Y;
Chicago 2; MLA; blah blah blah... Seems simple -- although of
course you need to know what the rules are!

I'm just talking about principles here -- not proposing to do
it! And "web research" ain't gonna happen in XyWrite! But
there are plenty of tools for web research...

> I could never get Ibid for Xy to work

My recollection is that the Ibid installation diskette either
replaced Editor.exe or used a binary overlay to Editor; and that
one inherent problem with Ibid was that each time they revised
the standard Editor, they also had to revise the overlay. I
think they stopped doing that revision at v4.016 or 4.014.
Maybe (?) that's why it doesn't work.

> I wonder if my NB copy of Ibid. would work with XY4? This is
> likely a completely silly question, since, as I understand it,
> NB 4.5a is the equivalent of XY 3.58.

Correct. You could try it. I'd wager real money that it won't
work.

> I would imagine that creating the programme to
> manipulate the style-sheets must be terribly
> difficult. The options seem infinite.

Which options are you talking about? Can you give a sense of
this infinitude?

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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