HARPER@CSC.FI ("Robert Harper Finland", CSC) (03/01/91)
Greetings from Helsinki Finland, I have just uploaded the BioSci TOC for the years 89,90,91 into the directory /pub/sci/molbio/databases/toc on the software server at NIC.FUNET.FI. The data is in two different formats File.dat and File.bib Amos "the famous" Bairoch, wrote a few programs to reformat the BioSci entries into EMBL/SWISS-PROT format. Those are of the type File.dat The idea being that table of contents are in a "unified" format that can be used directly by programs. Thanks to Amos Bairoch and Reinhard Doelz for making the files available. The other format is BibTex and the files are of the type File.bib I used nawk to convert Amos's .dat files to .bib files. There was a couple of reasons for doing this: 1) If you have Tex then you can use BibTex for producing rather sophisticated printouts from .bib files. You can for example use the same references to generate output in different reference styles. For example a "Science" style or a "Nature" style. Journals all have their own particular style when it comes to writing references. BibTex takes the pain out of changing between styles. 2) I was aware of a Shareware hypercard stack called WordRef which can be used to read BibTex files straight into the stack so why reinvent the wheel when trying to develop a database to handle TOC's when with a couple of day's work you can have the whole thing up and running. You will also find WordRef13.sit in the /toc directory. Even if you are not interested in TOC's from BioSci WordRef is a beauty to use if you merely want it for your own references. It has many different options for data entry. You can input for articles, books, proceedings, thesis, etc, and interconvert between different reference types. WordRef was programmed by Mark H. Nodine. You will need S P A C E on your hard disk of your Mac if you want to download everything. One year's TOC's can be quite big. All this an much more is available via anonymous FTP from NIC.FUNET.FI RGDS... "BibTex Bob"