[uf-discuss] one citation microformat use case

[Tantek Ç elik]

Welcome Michael!


On 2/10/06 7:25 PM, "Michael McCracken" <michael.mccracken at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, I just found the recent conversations about a citation microformat, and
> saw that the discussion slowed down around the same time someone asked about
> what problem we're solving.

The conversation is still going strong, but has moved for the most part to
organized deliberate work on the citation related wiki pages, please have a
thorough read - there's a lot there:

 http://microformats.org/wiki/citation


> I have a particular use case in mind: I would like to have my publications
> list on my home page have enough detail to reconstruct at least a BibTeX
> entry from it, and ideally something richer. I'd also really like to be sure
> that there's an element that's a link to a hard-copy of the referenced item
> for download, if available.

Both of those are good outline problem statements, I recommend you
contribute them to the citation-brainstorming page.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming


> Given such a microformat, I'd add support to BibDesk to generate it from
> BibTeX (and our upcoming database format), and support to add items from a
> web page directly to a database in BibDesk.

That makes *a lot* of sense.  Thanks for being here Michael.


> I would also like to be able to
> subscribe to a page with data in this format, so I'd know when new
> publications were added.

Precisely.  citation syndication.  Add this to the citation-brainstorming
page as well.


> So, I'd like to hear opinions (since I'm new to the idea of microformats) on
> how to support subscriptions with the citation format, and whether or not
> it'd be best done by also using hAtom.

Note that hCard is sufficient for syndicating contact information, and
hCalendar is sufficient for syndicating calendar/event information.  You can
always wrap anything in hAtom as an additional syndication envelope as
another alternative.


> I've been wanting to add this kind of support to BibDesk for years, and the
> number of citation metadata formats has made it difficult to decide on a
> good path to take.

That's an excellent observation.  Our hope is that by basing a citation
microformat on what people *actually* publish on the *Web*, we can use that
as a filter against the conceptual citation metadata format wars.

Looking forward to your contributions on the wiki.

Thanks,

Tantek