# RefDB handbook

covers version 0.9.9

Markus Hoenicka

              mhoenicka@users.sourceforge.net

1.23
2007-11-03
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## Preface

### RefDB in a nutshell

RefDB is a free and portable reference and notes database toolkit as well as a bibliography application that serves a similar purpose for SGML, XML, and LaTeX documents like Reference Manager or EndNote do for word processor documents. The bibliography part is something like bibtex for markup languages. RefDB consists of an application server which interacts with a relational database on the server side and a variety of clients on the workstation side. There is a choice of command line clients, web interfaces, editor interfaces, and language bindings that allow you to work with your reference data any way you want.

### Organization of this manual

Part 1 provides a general overview.

Part 2 of this manual explains the installation of the components and the administration of RefDB. These tasks should be performed by a system administrator, as you'll need certain privileges that a regular user should not have.

Part 3 explains the general use of RefDB for the regular user. This is the place to look if you just need to add or retrieve references or if you want to generate bibliographies.

Part 4 contains all the nasty details of the applications that RefDB ships with: All these confusing command-line switches, interactive commands, and configuration file variables that your brain refuses to memorize.

Part 5 is meant for programmers who want to modify or extend the behaviour of RefDB. You'll find a few internals which are of no interest for the regular user but might be of interest for casual hackers or notorious code fiddlers.

### Further information

This document is complemented by the RefDB tutorial which explains the tasks a regular user will face in plain English.

Please visit the RefDB homepage for additional information and new versions.

The refdb-users mailing list is intended to discuss the use of the RefDB package. This covers all topics from installation to running queries. Visit the refdb-users list page to subscribe and to browse the list archives.

The refdb-devel mailing list is intended to discuss the development of RefDB. Use this list to send patches and discuss the further development of this project. Visit the refdb-devel list page to subscribe and to browse the list archives.

The refdb-cvs mailing list receives (in spite of its name) the subversion checkin messages. Subscribe to this read-only list to be informed about the ongoing development of this project. Visit the refdb-cvs list page to subscribe and for further information.

Please send general bug reports to the users list (it might be a configuration or usage problem, and would thus be of interest to other users). However, if you have investigated the source code and either have a good idea what might cause the bug or even have a patch, please send the report to the devel list. In both cases you may wish to include the output of the `refdb-bug` script. This will create a file `refdb-bug.txt` in the present working directory which contains all sorts of information about your RefDB setup.

RefDB is maintained by Markus Hoenicka.

## Overview

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## Administrator manual

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## User manual

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## Reference manual

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## Programmer's manual

chapter-reference-database-design.xml appears to be missing chapter-refdb-database-design.xml appears to be missing chapter-ris-risx-format.xml appears to be missing chapter-programming.xml appears to be missing chapter-perl-client-module.xml appears to be missing chapter-backend-api.xml appears to be missing chapter-inout-formats.xml appears to be missing chapter-cs-protocol.xml appears to be missing

This document was written with GNU Emacs on FreeBSD. The XML sources use the DocBook XML DTD version 4.2. The images were created with Inkscape. The SVG files were then transformed to PNG and PDF using the Java application batik-rasterizer.

The document was transformed to the PDF and HTML output formats using xsltproc, FOP, and the DocBook XSL stylesheets through customization layers which are part of the documentation sources. The HTML output is further enhanced by a CSS file.