OpenOffice TC Approves Citation Proposal
The OASIS OpenOffice Technical Committee has approved a proposal—written by Daniel Vogelheim and I—to dramatically improve citation support in the XML file format. The proposal builds on the new biblioref element in DocBook, but extends it to be both more general, and to work within the context of WYSIWYG applications like word-processors. It allows coding that will support the following features (if applications provide them):
- semantic coding of complex point citation details like (Doe, 1999: 1, 3-4), or (Doe, 1999: part 3, paragraph 2).
- ability to seamlessly switch between, for example, footnote and in-text citation styles
Because the code is in the form of a (tiny) standalone namespaced schema, it could be used really in any XML format, including WordML. It will take time to see all of the benefits reflected in workable software products, but it’s an important step forward.
Draft version here.
