Easy book citations

Hello folks; please don't shoot, I'm new here. I've
noticed on the wiki that
there's a relatively long discussion about citation
formats, tending to focus
on creating microformats for full academic citations. From
my point of view,
this seems to go against the "start as simple as
possible" principle, but
let's move on.

I'm looking for something simpler and something a bit more
immediate. I'm
working on an online book recommendation site
(http://www.youneedt
oreadthis.com/) which will, obviously, display a lot of
information about books. I'd like that to contain semantic
markup for all the
books: nothing too fancy, just title, author, maybe ISBN. I
would imagine that
this is a fairly common usage case.

Can I do this yet? Is there a citation format ready to use
right now?

-- 
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are
probably wrong.
		-- Norm Schryer
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Lead by example. If you can get some use out of authoring
your own  
xhtml semantics, do it!

Document your process, add it to the appropriate wiki pages.
The  
citation format suffers so much from rhetorical discussion,
that I  
think an account of actual experience in implementation
would do  
nothing but help push the process further towards something
useful.

The citation microformat is one cowpath that has not quite
yet been  
paved, it would seem.



On Jul 30, 2006, at 2:53 AM, Simon Cozens wrote:

> f the code and the comments disagree, then both are
probably wrong.
> 		-- Norm Schryer
> ___________

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Breton Slivka:
> Lead by example. If you can get some use out of
authoring your own  
> xhtml semantics, do it!

OK, let's have a go:
http://www.youneedtoreadthis.com/book/view/0596102356
I don't consider the "authorgroup" and the
"metadata" to be part of
the uformat, they're just presentational - for me, at
least. ("metadata" is a
silly name if you think about it, it's all metadata.)

Someone said that the citation uformat should use hcards for
authors; this is
probably an ideal situation, but not necessarily practical
in all cases - for
instance, I'm slurping author data from Amazon and don't
have control of how
it segments into first, middle, last names, etc.

But I think this is a reasonable start.

-- 
So what if I have a fertile brain?  Fertilizer happens.
             -- Larry Wall in <200002121919.LAA27974kiev.wall.org>
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> Someone said that the citation uformat should use
hcards for authors; this is
> probably an ideal situation, but not necessarily
practical in all cases - for
> instance, I'm slurping author data from Amazon and
don't have control of how
> it segments into first, middle, last names, etc.

You don't need to partition names, I believe the minimal
hCard is
something like:

<div class="vcard"><div
class="fn">Ciaran
McNulty</div></div>

(It may be possible to do without the inner DIV and apply
the fn to
the outer one, I'm not 100% clear on whether the fn has to
be on a
child element of the vcard).

-Ciaran
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I think microformat citations are a great idea.  The good
news is the hard 
work has already been done for us.

The .bib citation format is a flexible, open, and widely
used bibliographic 
format.  It is the LaTeX reference managaer, but it is
widely used and 
adopted by many reference-management applications (Including
the glorious 
Bibdesk, Refworks) and software applications (OpenOffice,
LaTeX, Word?).

I believe our task could be as simple as microformatting the
bib format. 
We'd have guaranteed interoperability, and we'd be
leveraging the hard work 
of many before us in defining the namespace.

I would warn us away from attempting to change the
namespace. 
Bibliographic citation formats need loose flexibility to
interoperate with 
the many types of citation managers out there, and bib has
done a good job 
with this so far.  There is a draft DC standard on .bib as
well.

Here's a primer on .bib and bibtex, from wikipedia:

http://en.wikiped
ia.org/wiki/BibTeX

I would be willing to offer assistance in making this a
reality.  If we are 
going to take up citations, I strongly urge us to go the
.bib route.

-Fred

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Breton Slivka wrote:

> Lead by example. If you can get some use out of
authoring your own xhtml 
> semantics, do it!
>
> Document your process, add it to the appropriate wiki
pages. The citation 
> format suffers so much from rhetorical discussion, that
I think an account of 
> actual experience in implementation would do nothing
but help push the 
> process further towards something useful.
>
> The citation microformat is one cowpath that has not
quite yet been paved, it 
> would seem.
>
>
>
> On Jul 30, 2006, at 2:53 AM, Simon Cozens wrote:
>
>> f the code and the comments disagree, then both are
probably wrong.
>> 		-- Norm Schryer
>> ___________
>
> _______________________________________________
> microformats-discuss mailing list
> microformats-discussmicroformats.org
> http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microforma
ts-discuss

-- 
Fred Stutzman
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AIM: chimprawk

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Fred Stutzman:
> I believe our task could be as simple as
microformatting the bib format. 

That's a good idea, but could easily get bogged down in
months of committee
work (http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats) so I think it's
probably
better to have something simple working and build on it when
required.

-- 
10. The Earth quakes and the heavens rattle; the beasts of
nature flock
together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher
up heat
while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on
other days it
just rains. - Prin. Dis.
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On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Simon Cozens wrote:

> Fred Stutzman:
>> I believe our task could be as simple as
microformatting the bib format.
>
> That's a good idea, but could easily get bogged down
in months of committee
> work (http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats) so I think it's
probably
> better to have something simple working and build on it
when required.

Well, indeed, but wouldn't defining a new standard just
contribute another 
to this list?

Bib is widely adopted by consumers, industry and academia -
it is used in 
many reference management applications.  In using bib, the
micfrofrmat 
citation format would be instantly widely usable w/o
translation.

If we are going to define yet another namespace, that's
fine.  We will be 
here for months, I agree.  But if we adopt bib (or parts
thereof), we'll 
have a microformat that is actually usable.  In terms of
real world use, 
I've got stuff on my desktop and in my browser that can
deal with bib, but 
not with DC or Z39.80.

So the question is, what do we define as "something
simple working" - if we 
throw away the work of the bib community, who can use our
microformat?  Do 
we expect people to write new software and translation
layers?

Thanks,
Fred


>
>

-- 
Fred Stutzman
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Fred Stutzman:
> Well, indeed, but wouldn't defining a new standard
just contribute another 
> to this list?

I am neither suggesting we do or we don't accept BibTeX,
and am neither
suggesting we use or we don't use another namespace. I'm
just saying, get
something working and build from that. The history of the
Internet shows that
it really doesn't matter *what* you start from.

Now, it is a happy coincidence that the microformat I've
created as an ad-hoc
thing and am using on You Need To Read This uses exactly the
same namespace as
BibTeX - but that is because "author",
"title" and "book" are pretty
obvious
names for the things they describe. 

-- 
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make
one believe in God.
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On 7/30/06 1:53 AM, "Simon Cozens" <simonsimon-cozens.org> wrote:

> Hello folks; please don't shoot, I'm new here.

Hi Simon and welcome to the list!


> I've noticed on the wiki that
> there's a relatively long discussion about citation
formats, tending to focus
> on creating microformats for full academic citations.
From my point of view,
> this seems to go against the "start as simple as
possible" principle, but
> let's move on.

This is an excellent point of perspective to raise, and
rather than "moving
on", I recommend you add a statement about "a
citation format as simple as
possible" to the citation-brainstorming page:

 h
ttp://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming

> I'm looking for something simpler and something a bit
more immediate.
> I'm working on an online book recommendation site
> (http://www.youneedt
oreadthis.com/) which will, obviously, display a lot of
> information about books. I'd like that to contain
semantic markup for all the
> books: nothing too fancy, just title, author, maybe
ISBN. I would imagine that
> this is a fairly common usage case.

The way to determine if it *is* a fairly common usage case
or not is to
document real world examples using the wiki.  Fortunately a
bunch of folks
have started doing this.

  http:/
/microformats.org/wiki/citation-examples

That being said, if you have a set of "really simple
citation" examples
found on the Web I strongly urge you to add them to that
wiki page.

> Can I do this yet? Is there a citation format ready to
use right now?

Not yet.  There is the <cite> tag for enclosing the
entire citation, but
nothing formal has been developed for distinguishing the
structure.  There
are some proposals on the brainstorming page that you can
try using and see
if they work for you:

 h
ttp://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming


Continuing in the thread...


On 7/30/06 7:59 AM, "Fred Stutzman" <fredmetalab.unc.edu> wrote:

> I think microformat citations are a great idea.

Hi Fred and thanks!


> The good news is the hard
> work has already been done for us.
> 
> The .bib citation format is a flexible, open, and
widely used bibliographic
> format.

<snip>

> I believe our task could be as simple as
microformatting the bib format.

If the bib format was the overwhelmingly dominant
bibliographic/citation
format, it could be that simple.  But it is not.  It is one
of many formats
in wide use. See:

 http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats

For the documentation and research that has been done on
this.  If you have
additional data on usage, *please* add it to the existing
documentation.

The last time the "which format is newest / most
widely in use / most
interoperable" questions were asked, I believe OpenURL
was the answer.  I
could be mistaken, I've only been on the periphery of the
citation
microformat work and there are several others here who are
much more
familiar with the state of the work.


> I would warn us away from attempting to change the
namespace.

I'll put it another way, whatever the research in citation
*examples*

 http:/
/microformats.org/wiki/citation-examples

leads us to in terms of 80/20 citation properties and
schema, we very much
SHOULD re-use the names of properties from one or more
existing *formats*.


> I would be willing to offer assistance in making this a
reality.

Great!  

First I would like to point you to the microformats process:

 http://microform
ats.org/wiki/process

Second, the folks working on the citation microformat to
date have done *a
lot* of work along the lines of the process which I
recommend you read to
understand the current state of progress:

 http:/
/microformats.org/wiki/citation-examples
 http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats
 h
ttp://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming
 http://micr
oformats.org/wiki/citation-faq

>  If we are 
> going to take up citations, I strongly urge us to go
the .bib route.

We might end up re-using from the .bib vocabulary, and we
might use another
vocabulary (OpenURL) instead, or some other.  Once there is
consensus on the
80/20 schema from the examples, it is reasonable to discuss
the merits of
the various pre-existing citation formats in order to decide
which
vocabulary to re-use.

Thanks,

Tantek

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On 7/30/06 9:47 AM, "Fred Stutzman" <fredmetalab.unc.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Simon Cozens wrote:
> 
>> Fred Stutzman:
>>> I believe our task could be as simple as
microformatting the bib format.
>> 
>> That's a good idea, but could easily get bogged
down in months of committee
>> work (http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats) so I think it's
probably
>> better to have something simple working and build
on it when required.
> 
> Well, indeed, but wouldn't defining a new standard
just contribute another
> to this list?

Given how much pre-existing work there is it would be insane
to define yet
another different standard.


> Bib is widely adopted by consumers, industry and
academia - it is used in
> many reference management applications.

<snip>

> In terms of real world use,
> I've got stuff on my desktop and in my browser that
can deal with bib, but
> not with DC or Z39.80.

Fred this is very interesting data.  If you could add this
specific
documentation (desktop apps, browser extensions etc.) to the
citation-formats page, that would be *very* helpful in
deciding which
vocabulary to subset etc.

 http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats


> So the question is, what do we define as
"something simple working"

Being able to represent the 80/20 of existing citations
published on the Web
(per the examples research).  Some have suggested that even
that might be
too much and that we should start with 60/40 coverage which
I think may be a
reasonable proposal.

> Do we expect people to write new software and
translation layers?

A bit, yes.  Hopefully by keeping it *simple* and a 1:1
subset mapping to
parts of an existing citation format the transforms will be
relatively easy
to write.

Thanks,

Tantek

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