# # README -- slipbox # 1. General Description --- Slipbox is an open source tool for bibliography tasks and knowledge organization. It uses bibtex bibliographic data to collect books, articles etc. and its primarily use is to offer efficient search, which sufficiantly extensive demands. In order to provide this functions slipbox reads out the 'keyword' entry of the bibtex standard and extends its search even to content, like quotes. This is done to establish a quote database, from which you can cite a corresponding textblock into your current text. Furthermore slipbox broadens the reference service by bibtex to connect different entries with each other so that you can get a graph, which shows you your bibliographic content in a interconnected network. Finally some statistical functions make use of bibliometric data mining. 2. Some more features and more detailed view --- 2.1 Slipbox does not want to replace jabref (http://jabref.sourceforge.net/) * Additional to jabref it extends search possibilities and knowledge representation features. * It is not a fork nor an update of jabref because slipbox consists of several small ideas, which should be implemented separately first without gui in c++ to keep complexity down. * The features maybe enabled or disabled to use more or less space / execution time. 2.2 Extensive search mask for bibtex entries and indexing * Keywords listing * Search bibtex database according to specified fields (e. g. author, title ...) * By paying attention to keywords and indexing slipbox captures a concept by Niklas Luhmann, who explains importance of labeling entries with keywords for chance discovery. @article{luhmann1993, title={{Kommunikation mit Zettelkaesten. Ein Erfahrungsbericht}}, author={Luhmann, N.}, journal={Universitaet als Milieu, Haux, Bielefeld}, pages={53-61}, year={1993} } 2.3 Integration of quotes/arguments into bibtex * Bibtex possess an entry type called inbook (required fields: author/editor, title, chapter/pages, publisher, year), which is used by slipbox for quoting. * The required fields of an inbook entry can be get by cross-referencing to the book or article from which it is a part. Furthermore inbook gets some additional data entries: - quotetitle (summary of text) - quotedescr (more detailed synopsis) - quotetext (text to quote) - keywords (keys for a latter search) * It is not necessary to specify 'quotetext' because inbook entry type could be used normally as argument or text block. But the important idea is to collect inbook quotes or arguments, which have at least title and keywords to answer typically questions while writing: i) Where can I find a source for an argument? ii) What important arguments correspondent to a book? Slipbox tries to help answering by expanded search possibilities and lucid listing of quotetitles in connection to its referred entry type. * Quotes could be cite from external office programs with or without quoted text. 2.4 Interconnectedness of data * By working with books, articles ... a network between entries arises, when entries and ideas are connected. Each bibtex entry and especially each quote should be marked as linked to another. * Bibtex has an data entry called 'crossref' containing key of a cross-referenced entry. In this way it is possible to fill up entries with data from other. But the idea connectedness is to show relations. For that reason a new data entry is introduced: - connect (bibtex keys to connect to) * Some networks of interest could be: - All connections between entry types. - Beginning with book, which data is connected to it? - Starting from keyword, where is it mentioned? - List connections of a quote/argument. * The entry interconnectedness network can be plotted as a graph of nodes and edges which represent bibtex entries and their connections. * Network could be drawn as an image (using GraphViz or similar). 2.5 Statistical features * Bibliometrics offers citation and content analysis to make some qualitative investigations into your bibliography. * Data mining tries to find patterns in huge databases. * An easy application is to plot distribution of books and articles over time, to look for instance after publications peaks or vacancies. 2.x Expansion of other software (secondary tasks) * Latex - Cite quotes directly with page number and content * jabref - enabling advanced search - quoting bibtex support