refdb-mode 1.3 review

RefDB integrates nicely into Emacs

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Markus Hoenicka

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RefDB integrates nicely into Emacs. Combined with editing modes for SGML, XML, and RIS documents, you'll get an integrated authoring environment with direct access to your bibliographic data.

"Cite-while-you-write", document transformation, and previewing is just a few mouseclicks away for DocBook SGML and XML as well as for TEI XML documents. Emacs support is not included in the RefDB sources, but available separately.

If your editor of choice should be Emacs or XEmacs, the RIS major mode (ris.el) will make editing RIS datasets a little bit more comfortable. Font-locking will help you to spot syntax errors. Especially the end tag (ER - ) is prone to lack the trailing space if you're not careful.

The ris-mode displays valid tags in blue, except the special type (TY - ) and end (ER - ) tags which are shown in red. The tag contents are colored according to several criteria. If the contents of a field is limited in length, the color will extend only up to that limit. Author/editor, publication date, and reprint fields are checked for a valid content. ris-mode also provides the following commands:

- insert-set (C-c-C-s): inserts a new skeleton dataset (a "reference"). The function will prompt you to enter the publication type. You can use either the auto-completion feature of the minibuffer to enter a valid type or the history feature to select a previously entered type. The function will create a newline, a type tag with the type you selected, default sets of tags for a selected range of types, as well as an end tag.
- insert-tag ( C-c-C-t): insert a new tag. Use either the auto-completion feature of the minibuffer to enter a valid tag or the history feature to select a previously entered tag.
duplicate-tag (M-RET): insert a new line below the current line with the same tag as the current line. This command is convenient if you add multiple keywords or authors, each of which have to go on separate tag lines.
- backward-set (C-x[) and forward-set (C-x]): move between RIS datasets.
- narrow-to-set (C-xns) and widen (C-xnw): narrow the buffer to the current RIS set and widen to the full buffer contents.

The mode currently does not check the length of author entries, nor does it handle continued lines in any way. It does not attempt to check whether a reference is complete (e.g. it won't notify you if there is no author)

What's New in This Release:
The code was updated to work with RefDB 0.9.8.