[Axiom-developer] RE: Web based bibtex

[Page, Bill]

On Wednesday, October 05, 2005 1:44 PM C Y wrote:

> Bill Page wrote:
> > In the Advanced Search you can limit the search to just BibTeX
> > records. See
> > 
> > http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/Plone/search_form
> 
> Ah!  Got it.
> 
> > Click 'Item type' ( ) Select All/None, then check off as many
> > of  the *reference* types as you want. Enter some Search Text
> > e.g. "quadratic" and then click 'Search'. You should see 4
> > bibtex references.
> 
> Nice.  We should have some kind of documentation explaining what
> all the categories actually refer to - for example, is the wiki
> search the Axiom wiki + the Reduce wiki?

First: It is important to remember that the Axiom Wiki

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org

is a completely separate web site from the Axiom Portal

http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/Plone

The Axiom Wiki has it's own separate search function and no
bibliography.

It might be a bit confusing that there are also a set of pages
on the Portal called "Axiom Wiki". These pages are local to the
Portal - not the same as the ones on the wiki.axiom-developer.org.
And on the Portal there is another set of pages called "Reduce
Wiki". These pages are here primarily because I had not yet
decided whether it was better to support Axiom using a pure wiki
or whether to use a wiki pages embedded in the Plone portal
environment. Martin Rubey, who has spent a lot of time helping
develop the content on wiki.axiom-developer.org, does not
particularly like the Plone user interface. I agreed that Plone
is more complex so the primary site for Axiom became the
wiki.axiom-develop.org site by default. Plone on the other hand
might still be more suitable for registered users who want more
control over the content and structure of their web pages.

Some registered users of the portal (such as me :) also have
publicly accessible wiki pages in their personal folder.

So to summarize, you are right that if you check ( ) Wiki Page
in the Axiom portal advanced search, your search will include all
non-private Wiki pages anywhere on the Axiom portal. But this
does *not* include those pages on wiki.axiom-developer.org web
site.

Second: The 'Item type' checkbox categories actually refer to the
Plone object types/classes. Remember: The Zope web application
server, on which both ZWiki and Plone are based is a strongly-typed
object-oriented  database. (Yes, just like Axiom! :) Each page
in the database is an object of type.  The object type determines
the properties and methods that can act on that page. Wiki pages
are just one of the object types that are supported in Plone.
Zwiki, on the other hand only contains wiki page objects.

> ... 
> BTY, who can add bibtex entries?  Is it just the site admin?

No. Any registered user of the Axiom Portal can add bibtex
entries. They can also create their own private bibliographies
and other private web content. Later they can make these
pages selectively visible to other registered users or they
can "publish" this content so that non-registered users can
also see it. (Publication requires approval of a user who is
designated as a 'reviewer'.)

> Clearly there should be come kind of quality standard but
> I'm not sure how to go about it.

I think simply requiring people to register is probably
sufficient to ensure some level of quality. After all, the
entire wiki.axiom-develop.org site is open and editable by
anyone, but in spite of that we actually have very little
spam or other inappropriate content on that site.

So I think in this environment, the best way to implement
a "quality standard" is just by having someone assume some
responsibility for creation and editing of public content.
This is just a matter of someone stepping forward and taking
the time to do it. If several people wanted to do that,
even better. The wiki and the portal are collaborative
environments and by design they are intended to foster
cooperation between collaborators... blah, blah...

> 
> IMHO we should figure out how to make this general and
> robust from the beginning, because it will be very important
> to the literate programming effort to have a good structure
> for references set up.
> 

I agree.

Regards,
Bill Page.