[tex-k] Adding new formats to kpathsea

[Philip Kime]

Greetings,
I am the maintainer of biber and I'm wondering what is thought about adding a couple of new formats to kpathsea. biber can directly read .ris (RIS bibliography files) and also is working on a new format "BibLaTeXML" which has extension ".bltxml". It can also read Endnote and Zotero XML exports which tend to just have ".xml" extension. What is the feeling about adding ".ris" and ".bltxml" to the kpathsea format specifications so people can just do:

kpathsea foo.ris

etc. Without getting an "unknown format" error? I expect that the ".xml" extension is a bit generic to add as a new format but perhaps not?

PK

--
Dr Philip Kime

[Karl Berry]

Hi Philip,

Where would .ris and .bltxml files be stored in a texmf tree? Under
bibtex/ris and bibtex/bltxml? Is anyone actually doing this? It's no
particular problem to add, if it's useful.

(BTW, granted "bibtex" is a misnomer here, it really just means "biblio"
already, and I wouldn't be inclined to make another top-level directory
just for this.)

As for the .xml extension, that doesn't make sense, as you say. There's
no way to define a search path for it, since it could be anything.

k

[Philip Kime]

Greetings,
Nobody is doing this in the standard texmf tree yet. But they are
starting to do it via personal texmf path components which are picked
up by kpathsea via $BIBINPUTS etc. Looking ahead, it's likely that
biber will start to push some more modern format (it will always
support bibtex data format) which will make possible which the bibtex
format makes impossible. So a more generic top-level directory might
be a good idea in the long term. But, as I say, it's more likely in
the short-medium term that it's possible for people to put such things
in their personal tree or somewhere where one of the standard
environment variables point so that it can be found by kpsewhich.

PK

Post by Karl Berry
Hi Philip,
Where would .ris and .bltxml files be stored in a texmf tree? ?Under
bibtex/ris and bibtex/bltxml? ?Is anyone actually doing this? ?It's no
particular problem to add, if it's useful.
(BTW, granted "bibtex" is a misnomer here, it really just means "biblio"
already, and I wouldn't be inclined to make another top-level directory
just for this.)
As for the .xml extension, that doesn't make sense, as you say. ?There's
no way to define a search path for it, since it could be anything.
k

[Karl Berry]

Nobody is doing this in the standard texmf tree yet. But they ar
starting to do it via personal texmf path components which are picked
up by kpathsea via $BIBINPUTS etc.

Ok, if people are doing it in the personal trees, that's a good enough
reason to add .ris and .bltxml, I think. Will keep you posted.

So a more generic top-level directory might
be a good idea in the long term.

Oh, we can just keep pretending we really meant "biblio" when we said
"bibtex" :).

Thanks,
karl