One more question on bibliographies in Org

One more question on bibliographies in Org

[Vincent Beffara]

Hi,

Following the recent trend on the list, although this is not a question
about BibTeX as such, nor about the syntax to use for references within
the text, but rather about how to integrate references in an Org file to
be easily exportable. For now, a central database is not part of the
question, copy-and-paste is ok. The target would be mainly HTML and TeX
export. Here is a sketch:

For HTML: \cite{ABC09} would be mapped to a link to the bibliography,
something like <a href="#ABC09">[ABC09]</a> (regardless of whether there
is such a reference). The bibliography itself would be part of the HTML
page, typically like footnotes right at the end, with some structure
kept (but styling would be done by ad-hoc CSS so nothing much needed
here).

For TeX: AMSRefs sounds good because it makes the .tex file
self-contained. \cite{ABC09} kept as it is, and the bibliography would
be a \begin{bibdiv}/\end{bibdiv} generated from the .org file.


The main question is: what would be a convenient way to store the
references in the .org file, to allow for easy editing and exporting ?

Idea 1: A new block type #+begin_biblio containing the data in whatever
form (but amsrefs makes sense, easily parsable for html export and
nothing to be done for tex export). While we're at it, maybe also
#+begin_bibentry if it helps cross-backend support.

Idea 2: #+begin_src amsrefs, and leverage babel for the output. But I'm
not sure if babel can act differently according to the export backend
being used?

Idea 3: A heading with tag :biblio:, which would be treated as a special
case at some point in the export, and containing one sub-heading per bib
entry, with properties storing the database like in org-bibtex (and
possibly unexported contents for notes). This gives access to structure
manipulation, refile, column view ... which would be awesome, but I'm
not sure how it would fit the export framework.


Which one would be best? Which one would be easiest to implement?

I'm willing to try a bit of coding, but the first step is the hardest
...

Cheers,

        /vincent

-- 
Vincent Beffara

Re: One more question on bibliographies in Org

[Jeremy Barbay]

Vincent Beffara <vbeffara <at> ens-lyon.fr> writes:


> The main question is: what would be a convenient way to store the
> references in the .org file, to allow for easy editing and exporting ?

What I have done so far is to use some bibtex blocks, which tangle to an 
external bib files. It is sometime useful to have the bibliography divided in 
separate sections inside the org file.

Re: One more question on bibliographies in Org

[Vincent Beffara]

>> The main question is: what would be a convenient way to store the
>> references in the .org file, to allow for easy editing and exporting
>> ?
>
> What I have done so far is to use some bibtex blocks, which tangle to
> an external bib files. It is sometime useful to have the bibliography
> divided in separate sections inside the org file.

That sounds good for purely LaTeX/PDF exports, thanks for the suggestion.

Now, how to do it for HTML ? Is it possible to choose the tangle format
/ destination depending on the current export backend ?

-- 
Vincent Beffara

Re: One more question on bibliographies in Org

[Richard Lawrence]

Vincent Beffara <vbeffara@ens-lyon.fr> writes:


> The main question is: what would be a convenient way to store the
> references in the .org file, to allow for easy editing and exporting ?

Have you looked at org-bibtex?  It stores bibliographic data as
properties.

I keep a separate Org headline for each reading I do, under which I
write notes, etc.  I use org-bibtex to store the bibliographic data for
each of these entries, and a custom elisp function (which basically just
maps org-bibtex-headline over these entries) to generate a .bib file on
demand.

I imagine it would be easy enough to modify org-bibtex to also provide
an export bibliographic data to some HTML-friendly format.

-- 
Best,
Richard

Re: One more question on bibliographies in Org

[Richard Lawrence]

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> writes:

> I imagine it would be easy enough to modify org-bibtex to also provide
> an export bibliographic data to some HTML-friendly format.

Actually, it looks like the (relatively new) contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el
does basically this, by running a .bib file through bibtex2html.

Best,
Richard