DOCBOOK-APPS: ANN: RefDB 0.8.2 - reference and bibliography tool

[Markus Hoenicka <hoenicka_markus at compuserve dot com>]

Hi all,

version 0.8.2 of RefDB, a reference database and bibliography tool for
markup languages, is now available at:

http://refdb.sourceforge.net

Description
===========

RefDB helps you to keep track of the publications you read and allows
you to automatically create bibliographies in your SGML, XML, or LaTeX
documents. The citations and bibliographies can be formatted according
to the specifications of a particular journal or publisher. RefDB
currently supports the following document types and stylesheets:

DocBook SGML (DSSSL)
DocBook XML (DSSSL or XSL)
TEI XML (XSL)

Further document types can be added without modifying RefDB itself.

RefDB is a client/server system which was specifically designed to
allow sharing of databases in workgroups or departments, although it
runs just as well on a standalone workstation. RefDB currently runs on
Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows/Cygwin, but other Unices most likely work
as well. RefDB is released under the GPL and available for free.

How does it work?
=================

You create citations in your source document (<xref> in DocBook, <ptr>
in TEI) that specify in an attribute which reference from the database
(and from which database) you wish to cite. RefDB creates a
<bibliography> (DocBook) or <div> (TEI) element which you can insert
as an external entity in your document. This external entity contains
all linkends to the citations that you created. RefDB also creates a
customized stylesheet driver file which contains specific formatting
information for the chosen citation and bibliography style. Finally
you can transform your document with Jade or an XSLT processor, using
the custom driver file, to obtain a document with the citations and
the bibliography formatted according to the publisher's specs. It
supports all common citation styles (author-year, numbered),
author-only and year-only citations, all sorts of bibliography sorting
and formatting.

RefDB does not mangle your source document. Reformatting for a
different bibliography style does not require any changes in your source
document. None of these features requires any changes to the DTDs or
to the stylesheets (all magic is in the driver files).

Any comments, suggestions, feedback are greatly appreciated.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
hoenicka_markus@compuserve.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/