RefDB 0.8.2 - A Reference and Bibliography Tool

Date:      Wed, 09 Jan 2002 23:01:59 -0600
From:      Markus Hoenicka <hoenicka_markus@compuserve.com>
Subject:   DOCBOOK-APPS: ANN: RefDB 0.8.2 - reference and bibliography tool

Hi all,

version 0.8.2 of RefDB, a reference database and bibliography tool for markup languages, is now available at:

http://refdb.sourceforge.net.

Description

RefDB helps you to keep track of the publications you read and allows you to automatically create bibliographies in your SGML, XML, or LaTeX documents. The citations and bibliographies can be formatted according to the specifications of a particular journal or publisher. RefDB currently supports the following document types and stylesheets:

DocBook SGML (DSSSL)
DocBook XML (DSSSL or XSL)
TEI XML (XSL)

Further document types can be added without modifying RefDB itself.

RefDB is a client/server system which was specifically designed to allow sharing of databases in workgroups or departments, although it runs just as well on a standalone workstation. RefDB currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows/Cygwin, but other Unices most likely work as well. RefDB is released under the GPL and available for free.

How does it work?

You create citations in your source document (<xref> in DocBook, <ptr> in TEI) that specify in an attribute which reference from the database (and from which database) you wish to cite. RefDB creates a <bibliography> (DocBook) or <div> (TEI) element which you can insert as an external entity in your document. This external entity contains all linkends to the citations that you created. RefDB also creates a customized stylesheet driver file which contains specific formatting information for the chosen citation and bibliography style. Finally you can transform your document with Jade or an XSLT processor, using the custom driver file, to obtain a document with the citations and the bibliography formatted according to the publisher's specs. It supports all common citation styles (author-year, numbered), author-only and year-only citations, all sorts of bibliography sorting and formatting.

RefDB does not mangle your source document. Reformatting for a different bibliography style does not require any changes in your source document. None of these features requires any changes to the DTDs or to the stylesheets (all magic is in the driver files).

Any comments, suggestions, feedback are greatly appreciated.

regards,
Markus

Markus Hoenicka
hoenicka_markus@compuserve.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See also: "MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) and SGML/XML."

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