Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom bibliography

[C Y]

--- Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> wrote:

> Maybe the original source
> 
> http://www.math.utah.edu:8080/pub/tex/bib/axiom.bib
> 
> might be interesting for the Axiom-References page.
> 
> Ralf

Nelson Beebe is something of a legend when it comes to bibtex reference
files - it is his Macsyma/Maxima bibliography that is found in the
Maximabook, although I suspect it may now be out of sync with his
latest version.  He has far and away the most extensive collection of
bibtex files I have ever seen.

I see he has explicitly licensed this file as public domain, which
answers that question ;-).

I have always found his Bibtex files to be extremely well done and well
organized.  I know we have not yet arrived at a solution for the
problem of a bibtex file for Axiom pamphlets, but when we do arrive at
one I would suggest looking to this file as a starting point.  Indeed,
if he is interested it would probably be a good idea to work with him
on issues related to bibtex.

The problem of making a bibtex file into a pamphlet file is going to be
a big one, primarily because in order to make some sense of the one
(large) file it would be advisable to keep it ordered by date, author,
or some other key.  But the only way I know of which might be able to
achieve this would be to use some tool for the management of
bibliographies.  JabRef would be far and away my preference - it is the
leading open source solution that I am aware of, and I'm hoping its
Groups feature could be used somehow to manage things:

http://jabref.sourceforge.net/
http://jabref.sourceforge.net/images/Jabref-ScreenShot-MainWindow.png

but if we do use such a tool we have the problem of its being designed
to work with bibtex, not bibtex in pamphlet :-/.

>From what I can remember, it was Tim's wish that we have not just a
bibtex file but a file which also discusses the papers in question.  I
would suggest however, at least in this one case, that we try to work
within the bibtex format rather than going outside it.  Managing
bibliographies is a very complex business, particularly something as
large as Axiom's is likely to become, and if we want to include
anything outside of the standard and normal optional fields for a
bibtex entry perhaps something can be devised.  Jabref has some
provision for custom import and export if it comes to that, so maybe if
we have to we could teach it to associate latex text between entries
with a particular entry and thus make the pamphlet itself sortable.

Has anyone any particular ideas on this?  For me the issue will become
rapidly more concrete as I work on the Unit and Emacs pamphlets, both
of which (units especially) are likely to have a healthy bibliography
by the time they are "done".  Since this is a core design issue for the
Axiom literate document system it needs discussion and consideration by
all interested parties.  There are a LOT of papers to include even if
you just take the ones on Axiom itself - when you branch out to other
types of relevant programs (proof checkers, etc.) and then pure math in
general we're talking THOUSANDS of papers which might (should) wind up
being cited by Axiom.  Each pamphlet will include the specific papers
it references of course, but the Bibliography as a whole would probably
constitute a volume all by itself.  We'll need intelligent ways to
merge, sort, and manage this process.  I guess I would propose this as
a rough draft:

1.  Create and maintain a central bibliography, starting with the
Nelson Beebe axiom.bib file as a beginning.  Pamphlet authors would be
encouraged to use the citations already present if they want to cite an
existing paper.

2.  Each new pamphlet will undoubtedly cite papers and other works not
included in the main axiom.bib file.  They will most likely either
append these new entries on to the end of axiom.bib or maintain a
separate file.  When a new pamphlet is submitted to Axiom, part of the
inclusion process will be incorporating the new bibliography entries
into the main axiom.bib file.  This can be done either via a diff
(preferably of an altered axiom.bib which has been sorted by whatever
criteria we decide to organize the main file) or the inclusion of a bib
file which contains all the new references.  In the latter case,
someone with the correct tools can merge the new references into the
main file.

3.  We need some way to identify categories of paper within the main
bib file - maybe some kind of agreed upon keywords for each category of
paper.  This will evolve somewhat but most major categories should be
agreed upon in advance.  This will allow someone looking for a
particular paper to cite to quickly identify the relevant subset of the
bib file.  This will require jabref or some similar tool to handle
properly, but that is going to be unavoidable in such a large file.

4.  If things get too large, we might have to consider "group" based
bib files - I don't know what the size limits are for bibtex but it
must have some.

5.  IIRC there is some way to process bib files as TeX documents?  If
so we can make the bibliography file available on the wiki like any
regular pamphlet file.  I'll have to check that.

Comments?  This is an important issue and will become much more
important as time goes on, so now is the time to figure out what is
"right" and implement it.

Cheers,
CY

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