On 19 Mar 2008, at 11:14, Christiaan Hofman wrote: > Search groups are mostly custom stuff. Each type of search group is > based on a server object that gets a search string (from the search > field) and should return a list of publication items. It should get a > string representation of the items that can be parsed by one of our > string parsers (like bibtex, JSTOR, MARC, etc). This is not the case > with what gets out of this: this is a page that must be parsed with > much more complicated methods, including downloading links. It's not > just parsing the string you get back. Moreover, it does not accept a > general query string, but a very specific request. (Unless there is > another form that does support a query string?)
What are the exact specifications of a search string? Do you mean a complex query with boolean connectors (as specified in http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/manual/BibDesk%20Help_10.html#SEC34) ? What do you mean by saying DBLP is limited to "a very specific request"? As for the result, I think again that it should not be a problem. I know I could very quickly code in Java a "protocol" class that takes a (therefore limited) query, that posts it in the form on the DBLP site, that takes back the html result, that iterates over each entry of the table, that, for one such entry, looks for the DBLP reference, that gets the corresponding web page, that extracts from it the bibtex entry, that adds it in the result list. All this would be transparent to BibDesk. Again, I do not know how to do this in Obj-C, but in Java, it would definitely not be a "much more complicated method" for me. Also it could be worth mentioning that there is a raw XML file of all the DBLP database (http://dblp.uni-trier.de/xml/dblp.xml). Again, I have no real-life experience of developing under Cocoa, but there is surely an API to easily build and query databases. The question is whether or not that is possible without having to download the actual xml file (which takes more than 400MB IIRC). At the very least, there could be a local index file? Again, I don't know what I am talking about, I am just mentioning this in case it's useful. > Obj-C is pretty easy, and if you know Java, most of it is just a > slightly different syntax. It uses [anObject method:argument] instead > of anObject.method(argument), etc. Yes indeed, I know pretty well the specifications of ObjC (I used to master SmallTalk quite well as well), but that isn't enough to (quickly) code what we're talking about (for example, I have no idea of library should I use to manipulate HTML). But I *will* at least give a shot at the Google scrapper. A ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-develop mailing list Bibdesk-develop@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-develop
