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List:       koffice
Subject:    Hopeful suggestion for kword
From:       "Praedor Tempus" <praedor () uswest ! net>(by way of Thomas Zander <zander () planescape
Date:       2001-04-24 19:54:34
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Hello,

I am a researcher at the University of Utah.  As such, I have the requirement
of being able to write papers containing many citations and the attendant
reference page(s).  In windoze or with a Mac, one can use Word plus EndNote
in combo to easily produce such research papers.  EndNote (if you are not
familiar with it) handles and organizes your bibliography databases and also
integrates with Word (or even WordPerfect) so that the writer can easily add
citations to a paper.  When ready to print out the final paper, EndNote
generates the correct citation style (user selectable or one can create new
styles) and properly formatted reference page(s) to go with it.  This is far
better than having to do this by hand.

In linux/*BSD/unix, the ONLY applications that can do this is LaTex/tetex or
Lyx - using bibtex directly or indirectly.  There are also two very nice
graphical bibliography/reference apps, pybliographic and sixpack, which
integrate well with Lyx, almost to the extent of EndNote with Word.

Since my writing REQUIRES many citations and references, I have gotten to
know Lyx and pybliographic.  It isn't perfect by any stretch, but it works
very well and is the only way to handle this sort of writing in the linux
world.  When I finish a given paper, I can at least save the document in a
generic text format that is understandable by Word, which my thesis advisor
uses, and the bibliography database from pybliographic (or sixpack) can be
saved in a format understandable to EndNote.  Thus, with some pain, I am even
able to share my document across platforms.

I would like to suggest that such a capability be added to kword.  A built-in
function, or addon app that integrates into kword as EndNote does with Word,
and allows the writer to simply go down a searchable list of bibliography
entries, select one or more, and then hit a "cite" button.  This would mark
the location within the document with a marker identifying the bibliography
database entry.  When one is done writing and citing, one could select a
citation/reference style (since different publications require different
styles) and then select "generate references" (or something), which would
then produce the final format for the citation and reference page(s) in the
paper.

EndNote does this for Word/Wordperfect,  as does pybliographic and sixpack
for Lyx.  The biggest problem with pybliographic and sixpack with Lyx is tied
to the steep learning curve involved in learning Lyx, its inherent
limitations as a GUI to LaTex/tetex, and the pain of generating new styles of
citation formatting, as needed, for use by pybliographic and sixpack.  This
requires one to become somewhat familiar with bibtex and bibtex apps.  It
would be nice to have a citation manager that ties all this together into one
easy-to-use GUI app, working with an nice, easy-to-use wordprocessor.  Kword
could fit this bill.

I you could create this citation capability in kword, which is certainly more
similar to commonly used wordprocessors than Lyx is, and be the ONLY linux
wordprocessor (in the strictest sence of the word) with this capability.

Highschool kids, college kids, graduate students, professors/researchers all
need this capability of easily adding citations and generating reference
pages.

You could borrow from pybliographic or sixpack, if not the code, then the
general idea, and expand a little on their capabilities to make it more in
line with EndNote.

I made this suggestion a year or so ago to Sun vis a vis StarOffice not long
after they acquired it.  They did ALMOST follow through: they added a
bibliography database capability to staroffice but it doesn't do anything
useful except act as a repository for references.  It wont add citations to a
document, and it wont generate the reference pages to go with it either.  A
writer using StarOffice still must manually enter every citation and then
organize and write the reference pages.  This makes it unusable for anyone
who writes many research papers.

--
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

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