>>>>> "CC" == Cesar Augusto Rorato Crusius <c.crusius@ieee.org> writes: CC> Hi. I recently started using Xindy as the main tool for TeX CC> indexing. I liked it very much, and I have a suggestion: I think CC> that with a little tweaking on the code or something we should be CC> able to use Xindy as a replacement of BiBTeX. If we can do that, CC> then we could use Xindy capabilities to format entries, citations CC> and so on using the same framework (instead of having to learn CC> bibtex syntax). You are completely right that an event-based scheme as implemented in xindy would be a Good Way to go for a bibliography support tool. In fact, the sorting parts of xindy is sufficiently modular to be usable in lots of other circumstances, too. Open problems remain in the tagging of the bibliography entries. It seems to be that the language must be a part of the entry information. How does it interfer with the language of the document? Btw, I think, Frank's and Chris' latest article in TUGboat is a must-read in that context. Another problem is that one might want more information about the _expected_ set of information in a bibliographic category. That may be modelled by classes, but one soon ends with inheritence relations to sets of classes, if one starts to model all structures. (Modelling common structure part is necessary to provide the events for structured representations of bibliographies.) CC> Are there any efforts on the subject? Not any more, to my knowledge. A few years ago, we made a study and an incomplete prototype (that used Tcl for event action formulations, actually). The experiences were incorporated into xindy, as were the results of the STIL (a prototype of an OO-event-based SGML backend) study. They weren't followed up yet, as the main focus is making xindy more popular, currently. This doesn't mean that one shouldn't go forward; take the xindy code, experiment and add interesting and necessary changes. Send them back, we want to include them in the distribution! Hey, that's what free software is about, isn't it -- share and enjoy! :-) Cheers, Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Net & Publication Consultance GmbH Tel.: +49-6074-861530 Roedermark, Germany Fax: +49-6074-861531