On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Douglas Stebila <doug...@stebila.ca> wrote: > On 2009-Feb-19, at 1:20 AM, Christiaan Hofman wrote: > >> Are you aware of the Web Group? > > > The Web Group is nice, but (a) does not fit naturally into many > people's workflow, and (b) does not allow for adding importers without > altering the BibDesk source code.
If we solve (b), does (a) go away? Web group works well enough for me that I now start in BibDesk when I start looking for a reference. Maybe the problem is just that it isn't polished enough yet to get people to change habits? Or am I being naive and no one will ever really switch from the browser? -mike > On 2009-Feb-19, at 9:49 AM, Maxwell, Adam R wrote: > >> The short answer is no. A few sites are supported in the Web group >> that >> Christiaan mentioned, but there's no way for users to write plugins >> that tie >> into that group. > > It seems to me the natural way to do this right would be to have any > easy way of plugins that can be used either in the web group or can be > accessed by AppleScript, which then allows for easy scripts to be > written for Safari or Firefox or your web browser of choice. > >> If you're using Firefox, you might be interested in this: >> http://www.mackerron.com/. It uses Zotero's scrapers to push >> references to >> BibDesk. > > I was not aware of Citeulike or Zotero. Since a lot of work has been > done by people in developing importers for Zotero it would be nice if > those importers could be adapted for more generic use outside of the > Zotero framework, but, after perusing the code, that seems unlikely. > It would be great if there was a standardized importer framework so > that importers could be written once and used in lots of programs -- > Zotero, BibDesk, etc. -- but that may be beyond the scope of what is > reasonable to do at this point. > > If someone more familiar with the BibDesk source code is interested in > this and willing to work with me on this, I am willing to put some > time into developing this. But I don't want to just go off and write > it without knowing that it fits within the vision the core developers > have for BibDesk. > > Douglas > > > >> On 18 Feb 2009, at 6:29 PM, Douglas Stebila wrote: >> >>> Is there a standard, simple way to write and install methods for >>> BibDesk to import citations from Safari/Firefox? >>> >>> Here's the scenario I'm thinking of. Users are browsing the web in >>> Safari or Firefox and they come across a paper on a major site >>> (arXiv, >>> Springer, IEEE, etc.) for which they'd like to import the citation >>> into BibDesk. It would be great if they could access an AppleScript >>> in Safari/Firefox, or switch to BibDesk and click a single button, >>> and >>> have BibDesk parse the website, pull out the right bibliographic >>> data, >>> and create a new citation. >>> >>> Now, obviously having BibDesk parse all the data and figure it out >>> automatically is too hard. But one could write parsers for >>> individual >>> websites that know the idiosyncracies of various websites. Indeed, >>> this is what a lot of the importer AppleScripts on the BibDesk wiki >>> do: >>> >>> http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/bibdesk/index.php?title=BibDesk_Applescripts >>> >>> But this results in a lot of duplication of work and work being done >>> in a non-standard way. I think there should be (and perhaps there is >>> and I just don't know about it) a standard way of adding importers of >>> this form into BibDesk at runtime, and moreover that these importers >>> should be able to be written in scripting languages (AppleScript, >>> shell script, etc.) as opposed to having to be written in Objective-C >>> in the main BibDesk source tree. This would allow users to easily >>> add >>> importers for their favourite websites without needing to know >>> Objective-C. >>> >>> I've actually written such an extensible framework entirely in >>> AppleScript that has importer scripts for websites that I use (arXiv, >>> IEEE, ACM, Springer), so if you want to see what I mean a temporary >>> version is available for download at >>> http://www.douglas.stebila.ca/files/code/bibdesk/Importers-0.9.2.zip >>> I'd be happy to contribute to developing part of this if people think >>> it should be added to BibDesk, but I'm not a very good Objective-C >>> coder. >>> >>> But I think this is functionality that lots of people will want and >>> so >>> there should be one way to do it, not lots of people writing random >>> scripts and posting them in random locations. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Douglas >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San >>> Francisco, CA >>> -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the >>> Enterprise >>> -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source >>> participation >>> -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source >>> code: SFAD >>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Bibdesk-users mailing list >>> Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San >> Francisco, CA >> -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the >> Enterprise >> -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source >> participation >> -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source >> code: SFAD >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H >> _______________________________________________ >> Bibdesk-users mailing list >> Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA > -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise > -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation > -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD > http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H > _______________________________________________ > Bibdesk-users mailing list > Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users > -- Michael McCracken UCSD CSE PhD Candidate research: http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/~mmccrack/ misc: http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-users mailing list Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
