I would like to start a discussion regarding the implementation of the 
Bibliography database function. I am willing to take on a role in formulating 
requirements for this if it is required. 
 
I am David Wilson. I have had some 20 years professional IT experience, which 
included database and application design, but I am a terrible programmer. 
Currently I am writing a MA thesis in history and I use OpenOffice (641) on 
Linux. 
 
This is my first posting here so please forgive if have missed some of the 
previous discussion, and please let me know if I am on the wrong track here. 
 
The Current Facilities 
 
In the current version (641) we have the old StarOffice 5.2 Bibliographic 
database and its simple reference insertion process. When an OpenOffice 
bibliographic entry is dragged onto a document, a dialog box opens which 
allows one to select the fields we want for the entry. This is saved so next 
time we can just drag the field entry into the text. For example ?Oisin and 
Patrick? in Irish Myths and Legends, Lady Gregory. (London: Running Press, 
1989) 412-421. This fine for a book entry but if I next need an Journal 
article entry I have to adjust the field list to look like ? T.M. 
Charles-Edwards, Honour and status in Some Irish and Welsh Prose Tales. in 
Eriu, xxxvi 1978.? Then I may need to insert an article in book, then a paper 
from conference proceedings, ect. It does not support the character 
formating, I have to adjust this myself. This was just not practicable. 
 
We also have the new ?Insert>Indexes and Tables>Bibliographic Entry?. This 
does will not select entries from the current bibliographic database on my 
system. But I assume that this will be fixed in a later version. It does 
allow me to add Bibliographic entries for the document, add references into 
the text and to produced a Bibliography. The format of the Bibliography can 
be finely controlled (it has character formating) and this is a very good 
piece of design and implementation. 
 
The Issue 
 
But these is one major problem with this. It seems to support only one of the 
commonly used citation methods ? ? the parenthetical or author date-method, 
and does not support the other common method - the footnote or endnote 
method. We I add a ?Insert>Indexes and Tables>Bibliographic Entry? it asks me 
to select the short name (the Citation Identifier) and it pasts this as a 
field into the document - (WILSON2002). 
 
Proposal 
 
I propose that we support the footnote or endnote method as well. This 
 defined in the ?Chicago Manual of Style? (Documentation is on the web at 
http://www.fsu.edu/~library/guides/chicago.html .). 
 
A suggestion is that the ?Bibliographic Entry? Dialog box allow the selection 
between the two methods, this would select for the insertion of the ?Short 
name? or for the formated text string similar to that defined for the 
Bibilography entries. This would not be too difficult to do. Ideally support 
could also be developed for the style convention that the first mention of a 
reference contain the full detail as and all subsequent references use the 
shorter version - ?Oisin and Patrick? in Irish Myths and Legends, 412-421. 
(without the publication details.) 
 
 
Even better would be to select the style conventions predefined and to be 
 able to select the style required - such as Chicago, APS, Harvard, ect. It 
 might be consided that the Style Convention attribute should be applied to 
 the document as a whole, to avoid mixtures of styles, and examiners red 
 marks. Also selection of a document style could also set other document 
 defaults, such as spacing, heading format etc. This would greatly facilitate 
 the accurate setting up of the document format ( I have not looked far into 
 this aspect). 
 
As facility of importing Style Conventions would be required. Endnote 
 provides style definitions to the general public which could be imported if 
 their import format was decoded. 
 http://www.endnote.com/support/enstylesfinder.asp 
 
We will have reached nirvana when, we can write one paper and just by 
selecting the required document Style Convention, print off submissions to 
numerous journals (all with different strictly enforced style conventions). 
Also we will have just about replaced Endnotes (TM), which will save many 
thousands of poor university students hundreds of dollars, euros etc. 
 
I welcome any comments or suggestions. 
 
Regards 
 
David Wilson