[p0]

I'm stripping parts from the original message as it has become too
large to process decently.

On a side note, the beauty of custom xml in ooxml is that you can
define your own way of storing data. And you don't even have to stick
to xml: you can store binary data in an xml file. So if you really are
unhappy with the format, you can easily extend Word with your own set
of bibliographic tools.

I don't know what any of that means.

Well, if you are concerned with size (little tags rather than big
ones), you are in for a surprise, your Word document actually contains
all bibliographic data twice (talking about overkill).

What you see as a docx file is nothing more than a zip-file. So if you
change the extension from docx to zip (make sure you have a backup),
you can use the compressed folders utility from Windows or an external
program such as WinRAR or WinZip to extract the contents of your
document. In it, you will normally find a file item1.xml in the
customXml directory. That is actually an xml notation of all the
bibliographic data in your source. You will also find a document.xml
file in the word directory. That file contains your entire text
including your well-formatted bibliography (no longer in xml format).
It is nice separation between the data and the view on the data.

So what I meant was, if you aren't happy with the current internal
data layout, you can very well define your own layout and then format
the data in the document.xml according to your layout (stored in your
version of item1.xml) and preferences.

What would "ed" be? editor? edition?

ed vs. edn

And then I would think about "editorial notes". Really, shortcutting
data entries to save space is, in my personal opinion, about the worst
thing you can do. EndNote allows importing data based on shortcut
codes. But once imported, the data is once again stored in
'understandable' xml as it should be done. And luckely for that,
because nobody without a decent manual would be able to figure out
that %I is actually the field representing the publisher.

The entire point of using full
discriptive names in tags rather than crafty shortcuts is to make
things clear for the people who have to add them.

But the people shouldn't ever need to see them! They should see a form
to fill in, with each slot labeled with the category that goes in it.
"Author" would have a drop-down list of all Names, since most subject
bibliographies involve several works by the same person. (Likewise for
"Place" and "Publisher.")

Yes you will have to
type more, but at least elements will be defined in such a way that
there is no confusion for the user. And for non-english speaking
people, full words are a lot easier to understand than shady
abbreviations.

Not at all problem if you have an internationalizationized, or
whatever they call it, interface.

That's what the source form (insert new citation) is for in Word 2007.
Check your computer for a bibform.xml, if you are using an en-us
version of word, it should be in word directory\1033\bibliography
\bibform.xml. For other languages, you will have to replace 1033 with
your local culture id (lcid). The file contains a mapping of localized
strings (Label element) to xml tags (DataTag element). On a side note,
the bibform.xml claims to follow the bibliography xml schema (default
namespace) but it is not doing so since the schema does not define
anything about the mapping.

Have a look at the, alas, defunct Mac program Papyrus (it wasn't worth
the effort for the creator to adapt it for OS X, so he just offers it
as freeware to anyone with a "legacy system," but its discussion list
was still active back when I had to abandon the Mac, two+ years ago).


The setup of this tool is totally different, this is a tool for
storing and searching bibliographic information, even entire
libraries. As a side product, it also allows you to format the output
a bit. Microsoft's tool is intended only for providing formatted
output. They don't care about maintaining a library where you can find
stuff by keywords or authors or ...


But all this is besides the point, the original topic was about adding
textual sources to your document in an automated way. I have seen some
tools for converting BibTeX or EndNote files into Word 2007 sources.
And you can always create a converter which translates your home-made
format into Microsoft's format, but you can't expect Microsoft to
support your format by default. They have a format, and you either
stick to it, or you design something else (which is pretty easy using
custom xml). The choice is up to you.