content/bibliographic/background.html - openoffice-org - Git at Google

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       <td>Last modified 27 December 2004

         <h3>Background</h3>
       </td>
       <td><p align="right"> </p>
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 <p>Many institutions require their documents to conform to a specific Style
 Convention, which covers aspects of document format, including the styles of
 bibliographic tables and citations. [<dfn>Citation: a short note recognizing
 a source of information or of a quoted passage</dfn>.] There are a number of
 Style Conventions: these include MLA, ASA, PSA, Harvard, Chicago. These
 different styles differ in the way in which they present citations and
 references for different types of source documents, such as books, articles,
 journals, collections etc. If a document has been written with one Style
 Convention it is a laborious task to convert all these references to another
 style. The ideal would be a fully automated method of conversion. This
 project is working towards that.</p>

 <p>LaTeX, with BibTeX, is the standard word processor in mathematics and the
 hard sciences. It can handle many types of bibliographic style conversions.
 OpenOffice will have to emulate LaTeX/BibTeX's flexibility in bibliographic
 styles (and in mathematic equations) if it is to gain acceptance in that
 field.</p>

 <p>OpenOffice's current bibliographic functions are limited. At present there
 are two loosely coupled bibliographic components. One is the old StarOffice
 5.2 Bibliographic database (dbase format) [<a href="biblioDbase.gif">screen
 image</a>]. It has a simple reference insertion process. When an database
 bibliographic entry is dragged onto a document, a dialog box opens which
 allows the fields required for the entry to be selected [<a
 href="//home/dnw/CVS/bibliographic/www/background-2.png">screen image</a>].
 This process can be configured for only one citation format in one citation
 style - eg book reference for MLA - and it does not support character
 formatting of fields, such as italic or underlining. The bibliographic
 database cannot import or export data in acceptable formats for other
 bibliographic applications.</p>

 <p>The other component is new in OpenOffice. It stores bibliographic data
 within the document. The data is entered through 'Insert &gt;Indexes and
 Tables&gt; Bibliographic Entry' function, and bibliographic tables can be
 generated from it [<a
 href="///home/dnw/CVS/bibliographic/www/background-3.png">screen image</a>].
 The new facility can also access the old bibliographic database. It allows
 Bibliographic citations to be selected either from the bibliographic database
 or from the 'document content' and inserted into the document. Selecting the
 'From document content' option and pressing the New button adds bibliographic
 references as hidden fields. A Bibliographic Table can be inserted that
 utilised the citations from the database and / or the 'document content' .
 The format of the Bibliographic Table can be finely controlled (it has
 character formatting) and this is a very good piece of design and
 implementation [screen image]. However, the citation and table field
 definitions can be set up to support only one Style Convention. To reset the
 table definitions for a different style is a laborious exercise.</p>

 <p>Another limitation is that only the in-text author-date [wilson2002] and
 the endnote forms of citation are supported: the footnote style is not
 supported. Another important limitation is that there is no capacity for
 in-document bibliographic data to be easily imported or exported. Nor can
 data be transferred between the internal document storage and the old
 database<strong><a href="index.html">.</a></strong></p>

 <p>For more details see <a href="deficiencies.html">A detailed list of
 OpenOffice bibliographic deficiencies.</a></p>
 </body>
 </html>
	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
	<html>
	<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	<title></title>
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	</head>

	<body lang="en-GB" dir="ltr">
	<hr size="1" noshade="noshade">

	<table width="80%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2">
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<td>Last modified 27 December 2004

	<h3>Background</h3>
	</td>
	<td><p align="right"> </p>
	</td>
	</tr>
	</tbody>
	</table>

	<p>Many institutions require their documents to conform to a specific Style
	Convention, which covers aspects of document format, including the styles of
	bibliographic tables and citations. [<dfn>Citation: a short note recognizing
	a source of information or of a quoted passage</dfn>.] There are a number of
	Style Conventions: these include MLA, ASA, PSA, Harvard, Chicago. These
	different styles differ in the way in which they present citations and
	references for different types of source documents, such as books, articles,
	journals, collections etc. If a document has been written with one Style
	Convention it is a laborious task to convert all these references to another
	style. The ideal would be a fully automated method of conversion. This
	project is working towards that.</p>

	<p>LaTeX, with BibTeX, is the standard word processor in mathematics and the
	hard sciences. It can handle many types of bibliographic style conversions.
	OpenOffice will have to emulate LaTeX/BibTeX's flexibility in bibliographic
	styles (and in mathematic equations) if it is to gain acceptance in that
	field.</p>

	<p>OpenOffice's current bibliographic functions are limited. At present there
	are two loosely coupled bibliographic components. One is the old StarOffice
	5.2 Bibliographic database (dbase format) [<a href="biblioDbase.gif">screen
	image</a>]. It has a simple reference insertion process. When an database
	bibliographic entry is dragged onto a document, a dialog box opens which
	allows the fields required for the entry to be selected [<a
	href="//home/dnw/CVS/bibliographic/www/background-2.png">screen image</a>].
	This process can be configured for only one citation format in one citation
	style - eg book reference for MLA - and it does not support character
	formatting of fields, such as italic or underlining. The bibliographic
	database cannot import or export data in acceptable formats for other
	bibliographic applications.</p>

	<p>The other component is new in OpenOffice. It stores bibliographic data
	within the document. The data is entered through 'Insert >Indexes and
	Tables> Bibliographic Entry' function, and bibliographic tables can be
	generated from it [<a
	href="///home/dnw/CVS/bibliographic/www/background-3.png">screen image</a>].
	The new facility can also access the old bibliographic database. It allows
	Bibliographic citations to be selected either from the bibliographic database
	or from the 'document content' and inserted into the document. Selecting the
	'From document content' option and pressing the New button adds bibliographic
	references as hidden fields. A Bibliographic Table can be inserted that
	utilised the citations from the database and / or the 'document content' .
	The format of the Bibliographic Table can be finely controlled (it has
	character formatting) and this is a very good piece of design and
	implementation [screen image]. However, the citation and table field
	definitions can be set up to support only one Style Convention. To reset the
	table definitions for a different style is a laborious exercise.</p>

	<p>Another limitation is that only the in-text author-date [wilson2002] and
	the endnote forms of citation are supported: the footnote style is not
	supported. Another important limitation is that there is no capacity for
	in-document bibliographic data to be easily imported or exported. Nor can
	data be transferred between the internal document storage and the old
	database<strong><a href="index.html">.</a></strong></p>

	<p>For more details see <a href="deficiencies.html">A detailed list of
	OpenOffice bibliographic deficiencies.</a></p>
	</body>
	</html>