NAME

db2ris - converts DocBook bibliographic data to the RIS format

SYNOPSIS

db2ris [-a] [-e log-destination] [-h] [-L log-file] [-o file] [-O file] [-r reftype] file

DESCRIPTION

db2ris converts DocBook bibliographic data into RIS files. The design and purpose of the DocBook bibliography information is too different from the RIS format to warrant a simple and straightforward conversion, let alone a bi-directional one. The DocBook bibliography definition allows for a lot of freedom how to encode your information. To accommodate as wide a range of uses and abuses of the bibliographic elements as possible, this import filter is implemented as a DSSSL stylesheet rather than as a C application. This allows you to quickly change or extend the stylesheet to adapt it to your needs. db2ris is a wrapper script which invokes OpenJade to do the actual transformation.

OPTIONS

-a: Use full first- and othernames if they are present in the DocBook source. By default, all first- and othernames will be abbreviated.
-e log-destination: log-destination can have the values 0, 1, or 2, or the equivalent strings stderr, syslog, or file, respectively. This value specifies where the log information goes to. 0 (zero) means the messages are sent to stderr. They are immediately available on the screen but they may interfere with command output. 1 will send the output to the syslog facility. Keep in mind that syslog must be configured to accept log messages from user programs, see the syslog(8) man page for further information. Unix-like systems usually save these messages in /var/log/user.log. 2 will send the messages to a custom log file which can be specified with the -L option.
-h: Displays help and usage screen, then exits.
-L log-file: Specify the full path to a log file that will receive the log messages. Typically this would be /var/log/refdba.
-o file: Send output to file instead of to stdout. If file exists, its contents will be overwritten.
-O file: Send output to file instead of to stdout. If file exists, the output will be appended.
-r reftype: Set the default RIS reference type. This type will be used if db2ris cannot infer the reference type from the BiblioEntry element.
file: The names of one or more DocBook files.

CONFIGURATION

db2ris evaluates the file db2risrc to initialize itself.

Table 1. db2risrc

Variable	Default	Comment
logfile	/var/log/db2ris.log	The full path of a custom log file. This is used only if logdest is set appropriately.
logdest	0	The destination of the log information. 0 = print to stderr; 2 = use a custom logfile. The latter needs a proper setting of logfile.
authorlong	f	Set this to t if full first- and othernames should be used if possible.
defaultreftype	GEN	The default RIS reference type will be used if a BiblioEntry element does not specify the type.

DATA PROCESSING

We have to make a bunch of assumptions to arrive at a suitable output:

•: db2ris will handle only “raw” (as opposed to “cooked”) bibliographic data. This basically means that you must encode all bibliographic data in BiblioEntry elements, not in BiblioMixed elements.
•: db2ris discards all publication date information from the PubDate except the first 4 characters of #PCDATA so these should better be a 4-digit year.
•: By default, the publication type is neither explicitly encoded in a BiblioEntry element nor can it be easily inferred. Therefore db2ris assumes that the BiblioEntry carry a role attribute with the RIS publication type as the value. If the attribute is missing, a default type is used instead. This means that you should add these attributes before the conversion in order to get useful RIS datasets (or fix the TY entries in the RIS file afterwards).
•: DocBook does not have a special element to encode the name of a journal or magazine that published an article. Instead the same Title element is used as for the article title, a book title, or a series title. To distinguish between a journal or magazine name and “real” titles, the Title element encoding the journal name is assumed to be nested in a BiblioSet whose relation attribute is set to “journal”, “pub”, “abbrev”, or “full” (this more or less arbitrary list can of course be extended or changed, see below). The values “abbrev” and “full” furthermore decide whether the RIS tag “JO” or “JF” will be used.

MODIFYING DB2RIS

As previously stated, db2ris is implemented as a DSSSL stylesheet that can be easily and quickly adapted to your needs. It may be prudent to create copies of the script and modify these in order to adapt them for particular “abuses” of the DocBook bibliographic elements in various documents or data sources. This section briefly lists the functions which you would most likely want to change.

reftype-heuristic: This function attempts to infer the correct RIS publication type.
titletype-heuristic: This function gives a hint whether a Title element is used as a journal/magazine name or as an article title or book title.
process-date: This function creates a valid string for the RIS PY tag from the PubDate element.

FILES

/usr/local/etc/refdb/db2risrc: The global configuration file of db2ris.
$HOME/.db2risrc: The user configuration file of db2ris.

AUTHOR

db2ris was written by Markus Hoenicka <markus@mhoenicka.de>.

REFERENCES

1. http://refdb.sourceforge.net/manual/index.html: http://refdb.sourceforge.net/manual/index.html
2. http://refdb.sourceforge.net/: http://refdb.sourceforge.net/