[uf-discuss] Citation Microformat: LazyWeb for BibTeXperts

[Joe Andrieu]

Brian,

Great work. I'm excited to see so much progress, as hCitation is one of the
most critical uFs in my current project.

Based on what you've done, I have a process question.

I, and others, have mentioned the need for a DateAccessed field, which is
required by several citation standards when referencing online work, e.g.,
the APA Style Guide [1].  I mentioned that on the Wiki, but didn't add the
use cases I'm concerned with, until just now.

I'm assuming that means it isn't included in what you've done so far.

One use case is capturing/copying HTML from web pages, ala Google
Notebook[2], Onfolio[3] or Kaboodle[4].  When such captures are made, it
makes sense to keep track of the full citation data, including the date it
was accessed, which may or may not be the date it was published.  Hence, my
interest in the recent Apple patent about meta-data with Cut & Paste.

Process-wise, how do I contribute such that a dtAccessed field (or
equivalent) makes it into the final standard?

The implied schema on the citations-formats page[5] includes the
dateAccessed, for which I just updated the link to examples so it goes to
the APA style guide (the old one was invalid).

However the implied schemas in your straw format in
citations-brainstorming[6] don't include dtAccessed and it seems wrong for
me to simply add it via the wiki.

Certainly, one could make a case that citations to online references fails
the 80/20 rule, because the vast bulk of current citations are to print
materials.  However, I think a bit of forward thinking here might be in
order.  Any blog that cites any other online content, whether a blog or news
article, /could/ use an hCitation to properly link to the cited reference.
Such citations, I would argue, should include the access date when the
blogger saw the referenced material, because we all know that the resources
on the other side of those links can change without notice.  This is another
common use case that I think should inform the new standard.

I just added the two use cases mentioned here to the Wiki.

And surprisingly, it was illuminating and disturbing. =)

I realized that the two cases focus on potentially marginal cases in the
microformats religion, because they are too forward-looking. The first
because it is missing the "output" part of the cut & paste, where the uF
would actually be used as part of the paste.  The capturing isn't where uFs
are important, it is the pasting and the current tools aren't necessarily
using HTML output.  The latter because bloggers have a working citation
mechanism that is just a link to the URL (hopefully a permaURL). One could
argue they wouldn't want a full hCitation. And in fact, until a tool exists
that makes it easy, they probably won't.  However, a tool that cuts & pastes
from anywhere on the web into a blog with a full citation seems like a nice
tool. Yet, I'm not really paving the cow paths with these ideas.

As you seem to be the shephard on this effort, what can I do to help with
this particular issue? (Other than raise a few points here?)

And what is the role of forward-looking use cases when the nature of the
situation is the shifting of real-world reference points from the
physical/published world to the online/digital world?  In other words, the
existing cow paths are through forests of dead trees!

That said, I am a big fan of what you've done so far.  I'm just not sure how
these remaining details get worked out on the way to a "final" microformat.

-j

[1] http://www.apastyle.org/elecsource.html 
[2] http://www.google.com/notebook 
[3] http://onfolio.com/
[4] http://www.kaboodle.com/
[5] http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats
[6] http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming

--
Joe Andrieu
joe at andrieu.net
+1 (805) 705-8651



> -----Original Message-----
> From: microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org 
> [mailto:microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org] On 
> Behalf Of Brian Suda
> Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 2:12 PM
> To: Microformats Discuss
> Subject: [uf-discuss] Citation Microformat: LazyWeb for BibTeXperts
> 
> 
> Calling all BibTeXperts.
> 
> I have found a few free cycles here and there and have pieced 
> together the first of many XSLTs that will convert the 
> Citation Microformat to various other formats.
> 
> I have updated my Straw proposal slightly to avoid collisions 
> with class values and to bring it in line with other formats 
> (e.g. hResume, what was 'title' is now 'fn') i also added 
> reference to using rel-Tag as keywords. 
> http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming#Example
> 
> Taking the implied schema, i began to create an XSLT that 
> maps those values to BibTeX. NOTE: this is NOT a 1:1 mapping 
> of BibTeX, it is a mapping of COMMON values in the wild to 
> their BibTeX equivalents (or atleast i think they are 
> equivalent - some one will tell me otherwise i'm sure). 
> Eventually, there will be XSLTs to map between the 
> microformat and other citation formats through the Implied Schema.
> 
> XHTML-2-Citations
> http://suda.co.uk/projects/microformats/X2C/
> 
> So, now we can begin to "round-trip" data. I have marked-up a 
> page or two of my own and can convert that to a .bib file. 
> The service is very fragile, it isn't nearly as robust as the 
> X2V, but this is still early days.
> 
> I am calling on LazyWeb to check the BibTeX output (i think 
> there are some know errors already). As well, i am asking a 
> few people to take the straw proposal values and mark-up some 
> examples themselves and test the output from X2C as input 
> into BibTeX applications. In BibTeX... are there REQUIRED 
> properties? enumerated TYPES? The Microformats only maps to 
> about 50% of all the BibTeX properties, but that should be 
> over 80% of what people are actually publishing, so there 
> SHOULDN'T be any issues, but i can't tell unless people test 
> and let me know. Is the Straw proposal adequate? Is KEY 
> required (can this be accomplied with the ID attribute)?
> 
> There are two properties that the XSLT does not yet support 
> that were in the Implied schema. IDENTIFIERS (which is still 
> under debate) and Language, which i COULD pull from 
> xml:lang="en" attribute, but does bibtex want "English" or 
> "EN", or should there be a class="language" property? or both?
> 
> -brian
> 
> -- 
> brian suda
> http://suda.co.uk _______________________________________________
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