Bibtex translator

[Owen]

Hello everyone,

I've updated the bibtex translator's web page export in two ways:
1) Bibtex type for web pages is now @webpage rather than @misc
2) Bibtex urldate is populated with item.accessDate

<git://gist.github.com/1028282.git>

Hope this is useful / helpful.

All the best,
Owen Green

[Richard Karnesky]

> 1) Bibtex type for web pages is now @webpage rather than @misc

Note that @webpage is uncommon. It is not enumerated in BibTeXing, is
not used by JabRef, and is not a type used by BibLaTeX. A few .bst
files use it (including the often-used elsarticle-num.bst, though NONE
of the other Elsevier styles).

@electronic might be a better bet if we want to differentiate webpages
from other @misc types: it is used by JabRef, is aliased to @online in
BibLaTeX, and is aliased with @webpage in many (though not all) of the
bst files that have that type. It isn't in BibTeXing & is not
specially supported by some styles, that just use @misc (such as
natbib).

Still, I think that @misc is probably the most common. Does @misc not
work as expected in the bst style you're using?

> 2) Bibtex urldate is populated with item.accessDate

This is also controversial. BibLaTeX uses it. As do the babelbib and
jurabib styles. JabRef does not & most BibTeX styles probably use
'lastchecked'. Tough call. One of the two is probably better than
neither.

--Rick

[Owen]

On Jun 16, 6:16 pm, Richard Karnesky <karne...@gmail.com> wrote:

> @electronic might be a better bet if we want to differentiate webpages

> from other @misc types...

> Still, I think that @misc is probably the most common.  Does @misc not
> work as expected in the bst style you're using?

@misc is liveable with - I hadn't realised that the other options were
so uncommon. It would be nice to have some mechanism for
distinguishing web pages (which for my purposes always need an
accessed date in the bibliography). It's easier to change all @online
(or whatever) to @misc than to change some @misc to @online!

> > 2) Bibtex urldate is populated with item.accessDate
>
> This is also controversial.  BibLaTeX uses it.  As do the babelbib and
> jurabib styles.  JabRef does not & most BibTeX styles probably use
> 'lastchecked'.  Tough call.  One of the two is probably better than
> neither.

Absolutely - I'm not too concerned about which it is, so long as the
information makes it to the .bib file in some form!

I could change what I've done to use @online and lastchecked instead,
if that's preferable.

Thanks for the response,
Owen

[Owen]

Hello all,

As per the discussion below, I have amended my changes to the bibtex
translator to use @online (instead of @webpage) and lastchecked
(instead of urldate) when exporting webpage items.

<git://gist.github.com/1028282.git>

Best,
Owen

On Jun 17, 6:46 pm, Owen <gung...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 16, 6:16 pm, Richard  Karnesky <karne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > @electronic might be a better bet if we want to differentiate webpages
> > from other @misc types...
> > Still, I think that @misc is probably the most common.  Does @misc not
> > work as expected in the bst style you're using?
>
> @misc is liveable with - I hadn't realised that the other options were
> so uncommon. It would be nice to have some mechanism for
> distinguishing  web pages (which for my purposes always need an
> accessed date in the bibliography).  It's easier to change all @online
> (or whatever) to @misc than to change some @misc to @online!
>

> > > 2)Bibtexurldate is populated with item.accessDate

>
> > This is also controversial.  BibLaTeX uses it.  As do the babelbib and

> > jurabib styles.  JabRef does not & mostBibTeXstyles probably use

[Richard Karnesky]

> As per the discussion below, I have amended my changes to the bibtex
> translator to use @online (instead of @webpage)

Just to be clear: my first suggestion was to leave this as the VERY
common @misc. If there is some consensus to see it changed, I
suggested @electronic, which is more common than either @online or
@webpage.

> and lastchecked (instead of urldate) when exporting webpage items.

And I don't know if I was recommending either over the other: just
pointing out that both are common.

--Rick

[Avram Lyon]

I'm inclined to defer to whatever Richard decides on this-- please try
to find some agreement. I don't use BibTeX, and haven't for years, not
since before I started using Zotero.

Avram

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "zotero-dev" group.
> To post to this group, send email to zoter...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to zotero-dev+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev?hl=en.
>
>

[Owen]

On Jun 28, 7:29 pm, Richard Karnesky <karne...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just to be clear: my first suggestion was to leave this as the VERY
> common @misc.  If there is some consensus to see it changed, I
> suggested @electronic, which is more common than either @online or
> @webpage.

Sorry, my bad - I just left it rattling around my head for a couple of
weeks and didn't double check what you'd wrote before changing.

> And I don't know if I was recommending either over the other: just
> pointing out that both are common.

Ah, ok - misunderstood you then.

In pursuit of arriving at some sort of consensus, the main sticking
point, if I understand, is the value or not of giving web pages a
specialised entry type rather than leaving them as @misc. I defer to
your evidently wider experience of the implications for changing this
(I found biblatex, liked it, stayed there), but would put the
following in favour of a change:

- @misc is common because it's the least meaningful common
denominator. It's pretty desirable in my field to be able to treat
electronic resources in a distinct way.

- Will styles not fall back on @misc, or some sort of generic handler,
when confronted with an entry type they don't understand?

- Even if not, ISTM to be quicker to go through a .bib and change all
@electronic to @misc, than to go through by hand and change some @misc
to @electronic.

w/r/t urldate / lastchecked - seems it doesn't particularly matter
either way (certainly not for my purposes).

Best,
Owen

[simifilm]

I know that some people will disagree vehemently, but taking biblatex
as your point of reference seems to most sensible thing to me.
Biblatex is the way of the future. I don't have any data, of course,
but from all I can see it has been very successful in the LaTeX world
so far. Much more important: It offers the most comprehensive and
thought-out data model and is – thanks to biber – fully Unicode
compliant. It can do everything any earlier BibTeX style can do – and
much more.

I realize that there still are many people who rely on traditional
BibTeX, but since you have to chose a non-standard field anyway, it
makes much more sense to take the biblatex way which is comprehensive,
clearly defined and is – very – actively developed. The LaTeX world is
slow in adapting to new thing, I know, but we don't have to actively
support this resistance to new things.

Just my 2 cents.

Simon

[adamsmith]

To get this moving  and since everyone seems to agree that there should be some type of accessed date, I'm going to propose going with urldate on export and allowing both lastchecked and urldate on import.
My impression is that the trend is tending towards urldate, not least because biblatex, as Simon says, is becoming more popular. It's in the nature of bibtex that that's not a perfect solution, but what can we do? As Rick says above, better to have anything at all in place.
Export date format YYYY-MM-DD?

[Rick Karnesky]

Yes, better something than nothing.  Fine with urldate. That's what Mendeley went with (though I wouldn't generally accept BibLaTeX over other comment BibTeX use cases: it has almost zero adoption by publishers.  In this case, though, most publisher-provided styles don't use either option).  YYYY-MM-DD is fine.

--R

[Aurimas Vinckevicius]

For website access date, it might be appropriate to increase time granularity to seconds. I'm no expert on BibTeX, but I think something like ISO 8601 timestamp could work.

On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Rick Karnesky <karn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, better something than nothing.  Fine with urldate. That's what Mendeley went with (though I wouldn't generally accept BibLaTeX over other comment BibTeX use cases: it has almost zero adoption by publishers.  In this case, though, most publisher-provided styles don't use either option).  YYYY-MM-DD is fine.

--R

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "zotero-dev" group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/zotero-dev/-/9-sMdcENnEIJ.

[adamsmith]

Rick is the expert, but in the examples I've seen, including the BibLaTeX documentation, they never mention timestamps. BibLateX actually specifices YYYY-MM-DD

[adamsmith]

pull request here:
https://github.com/zotero/translators/pull/448