Hi all!
> Le Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 08:19:25AM +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit :
> > Regarding your first item we might think about a debian/references
> > file with a defined structure and write a dh_installreferences script
> > to move this information to a defined place.
I prefer this solution of using a seperate file under ./debian since --
as Charles already said earlier -- there will be some opposition on
debian-devel. I'm involved with some (though little) of the "limited CPU
power" things and have quite strong feelings about adding a new field to
Packages since this file already grows to large. It's also mostly not an
issue of CPU power but bandwidth and disk space, as there are no tools
that allow a stripped download of that file, leaving the "uninteresting"
things out.
The solution proposed by Andreas here is IMHO the way to go: Provide the
information in the source package and install them where it is needed or
wanted. This is i.e. one way the Emdebian project slims it's packages:
Not calling certain debhelper scripts. I really do not see a need to
have citations in the Packages file since this is supposed to give short
information about the package; enough to see if it might be useful, not
everything that is available.
Another thing I'd like to address is translation: If we keep the
references in the long discription -- very bad, IMHO -- we add extra
burdon on the translators. Since there is no agreement on citation
style, everything will divert and changing it to a common format will
drive translators nuts since they get informed about changes that are in
fact no real changes; but they need to process them anyway.
> > I would strongly vote for RFC822 format (as debian/control, Packages
> > and Sources file). There are tools inside Debian to work on this
> > format (I'm using these in my scripts) and conversion to any other
> > format like BibTeX would be easy.
Am Donnerstag, den 09.10.2008, 10:54 +0900 schrieb Charles Plessy:
> For the format, although I won't stop volunteers to write conversion
> scripts, I would like to stress out that for biology the easiest is
> probably do download the pubmed.org record and convert it using the
> bibutils package in Debian, and that if we do not use a well recognised
> format, the first thing users will do is probably to reconvert what we
> provide to either PubMed, BibTeX or Endnote formats...
For the format, I do not really care but tend to suggest BibTeX since it
can be read from everything I know and can be directly used if one uses
LaTeX. It's also well understood by Bibus. It can also be easily
converted to other formats.
As a real fan of RFC822, I like Andreas suggestion, but I'm not what we
are going / want to provide: If it's just information about scientific
papers, I suggest to go for a format which is well understood and simply
supply it, so users can intregrate them in their bibliography software.
If we want to supply a database of all references to software inside
Debian in several formats, we needs to automatically build and maintain
this database. Also, I do not see the need to have such a database since
the single BibTeX file are enough to work with. I'd also (as a user) not
need them in BibTeX, EndNote, PubMed and whatever else is common.
> Le Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 11:24:10AM +0200, Teemu Ikonen a écrit :
> > How about adding an extra field to the machine readable copyright file
> > format? The mr-copyright file is RFC822 and thus easy to parse, and is
> > already in every Debian package. Package users could find the citation
> > from the same place as other author, copyright and licensing info. As
> > could the program generating task pages and other package listings.
I feel like this would just suggest that citation is enforced which in
most cases it isn't. I see citation totally distinct from copyright, so
I think it's not the place where this information should go.
> When we will have enough references, having a debhelper script will
> definitely be a nice enhancement. I also see it as a long term goal, as
> it will take one release cycle to have it in Stable. Using it before can
> complicate user backports.
Sure. So, to summarize, we have the following options:
1. The references are added to the long description
2. The references are added to Packages via a new X-* field
3. The references are added to debian/copyright
4. The references are supplied in a file under ./debian and
installed in a common location (via debhelper or other methods)
1. in an already widely-used bibliographic format
2. in a RFC822 format that is converted to other formats on
installation
To me, only 4) is an option, and I prefer to go the 4.1 route. I guess
I'm familiar with debhelper enough that I could write an install script
that will be accepted into debhelper. But not before we have consesus
about that, of course. ;)
Another issues that comes to my mind is whether we want to provide
references to/about the software/package or information which
publication the authors want to be cited with (if there are several).
Maybe we should differ between citation (what to cite, important for
authors) and references (information, important for users of a
software). Thoughts?
Sorry for the long mail! The stuff went straight from my brain to my
fingers and might therefore be horryibly broken. ;)
Best regards
Manuel
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