Re: [Biborb-general] trouble shooting questions

[Guillaume Gardey]

Hi,

> > If you want to import an existing bibliography, you should just copy 
> > it to "sample.bib" and "update from BibTeX". BibORB will update the 
> > XML and you will be able to browse your bibliography.
> Since BibORB assumes that one would run it on some remote hosting 
> server, for me, one crucial function  is to be able to download a 
> bibtex output and use it for my paper writing. Now, I understand there 
> will always be an up-to-date "sample.bib" there converted from its XML 
> counterpart, but it would be quite an *inconvinence* to login to 
> remote server and sftp it back. If this bib is going to open to 
> public, most of the users may not have venue at all, so I regard this, 
> i.e. "online download" an essential function. Any thought?

concerning the "online download" I have added a "Download" link when 
displaying the list of available bibliographies. I agree with your 
analysis when using biborb with a remote server. This is a use I do not 
really test because I both develop and run biborb on my local machine. 
But actually, I am not totally satisfied with this "quick" solution :). 
The bibtex is the one used by biborb and contains some not needed 
information or information you do not want to share . url, urlzip, pdf, 
link, notes, longnotes are related to local files on the server 
(electronic version of papers) or personal notes. For instance url, 
urlzip and pdf are relative path that do not mean nothing for a 
visitor. I will try to do some php/xslt functions to define which 
fields are available for downloads.


> > It is exact there is no HTML output anywhere: pages are generated on 
> > demand using PHP for the interface (menu) and XSLT to display 
> > entries.
> I don't understand what you mean here: is blank page supposed to be 
> normal in this case?

Concerning "Export to HTML" and "Export to BibTeX" which generate a 
blank page, it is normal if there are no entry recorded in the basket. 
Otherwise it is a bug (that i have not encountered yet).
For "update from bibtex", you should be redirected to the welcome page 
of the current bibliography (menu+statistics). If blank, one more bug 
:( .

> As a side note, I can think of seveal ways to implement both 
> "download" and "import" function, should not be too difficult, you 
> have laid the firm foundation there already. Unfortunately, I have 
> never done much php programming (but I do know how to use python to 
> get it done), so I am not much of a helper now. In general, I think 
> the software is promising, I'd like to help in other ways.

I notice that you seems also to be concerned with security (I do not 
know lot of people using sftp, scp, ssh or gpg in my laboratory). I 
think that there are many things to do with biborb with security in 
order to run a "safe" version on a server. I provided an authentication 
method using a database to provide write access to register user. As I 
am not an expert in web server and security there is certainly more 
stuff to do here.

Finally, import seems to really be a *must have* for the final 1.2 
version, your are not the only one to ask for it. So, I am working on 
it.

Well, to be honest these are my first programming steps in php, xml, 
xslt, xhtml and css. I am not an expert at all so any advices, 
thoughts, bug reports or functions to add to biborb will be welcome.

Thanks a lot

Guillaume