User's Guide

Technical overview

BibTex-like publication records (title, authors, year, journal, ...) are stored in a database, and web pages are automatically generated from the database using php scripts. Publications can be added, edited or deleted using an intranet-based back-office interface. All local users have access to all publications -- publications are not managed by their "owner" or by a dedicated administrator. This policy can of course be changed, but this freedom ensures an up-to-date server and presents no problems in pratice.

Each publication has its own associated directory, located in the public (web browseable) section of the server. The directories are created automatically when publications are added and include an index.php file which is the publication associated web page. These directories are organized by year, and have names generated from the initials of the authors' surnames, such as ABC04. To add documents, authors have to use the file module in the intranet pages. References to these files will automatically be added on the publication's associated web page. The key feature of the BasilicPlus server is that it handles access to files so as private files can be regularly stored as simply as the others on the server, without any public publication.

Associated documents

The types of the documents are inferred from their file extensions. Compressed files (final extensions .gz, .zip, .Z, bz2, bz) are also supported (if the original file extension is supported). The following extensions and types are supported:

txt : full text
pdf : acrobat pdf format
ps : postscript
ppt,pps : powerpoint
jpg, jpeg, png, tif, tiff, gif, bmp, ppm, xbm, xpm, psd : images
mpg, mpeg, avi, mov, wmv, qt, mp4 : movies

All of these documents are automatically included as links in the publication's dedicated page, accessible through small icons. Clicking on the "update" button at the bottom of the publication's page updates the web page when new associated documents have been added. A thumbnail is automatically generated for images (and almost automatically for movies). The first image thumbnail (in alphabetical order) is used to illustrate the publication in the publications-index pages.

An abstract for the publication can also be provided in a file named abstract.html (as always, located in the publication's associated directory). If your site is multilingual, you can provide additional abstract.lg.html files, where lg corresponds to your language code (en, fr, de, es...). Available languages depend on the BasilicPlus configuration. Ask your web administrator for details.

Similarly, if there is a file named info.html (or info.lg.html...) in the publication's directory, its content will be included in the publication's dedicated web page. Here is an example of such a file:

See also the page dedicated to this <a href="/Research/thisTopic.html">research topic</a>.

These files are written in html format to allow text formatting, images, links..., but they are not valid self-contained html files -- their content is included in the middle of another web page, so for example the <head> section is not needed, as shown in the above example.

Members publications' lists

Creating a link to an author's complete list of publications is as simple as :

See my <a href="http://yourserver/public_path/index.php?idAuthor=xx">complete publications list</a>

replace yourserver, public_path and xx by the appropriate values (idAuthor is displayed at the bottom of the author edition page).

Display publication query results

The results of more complex queries can be included in any web page. Authors can for instance list their publications in 2004 (for instance in their home page) with a line like :

<?php
  include("@@PublicationsPath@@/publiUtils.php");
  displayPublications( array("author"=>"last name here", "year"=>2004) );
?>

Or, to include a bibTex reference to a specific publication, use a line like:

<?php
  include("@@PublicationsPath@@publiUtils.php");
  displayPublications( array("bibtex"=>"XYZ04", "display"=>"bibtex") );
?>

You need to add CSS/listpubli.css to the list of style sheets at the beginning of your file for proper formatting (or create your own one). Note that depending on your php include configuration, you may have to specify a relative path to publiUtils.php.

The following table summarizes the different options that can be passed to the displayPublications function:

Parameter	Description
`author`	Exact last name of one of the authors.
`bibtex`	BibTex key (as it appears in publication's associated directory).
`display`	Possible values are `list` (default) and `bibtex`. Same as on the index page.
`fullYear`	When `true`, results of a given year are not cut, even if `nbPerPage` limit is overpassed. Default value is `false`.
`idAuthor`	id of one of the authors (visible when editing author's data in backoffice).
`nbPerPage`	Maximum number of displayed results. Others are available using `pg` with values greater than 1. Default value is 10. See also `fullYear`.
`pg`	When more there are more than `nbPerPage` results, defines the displayed page. A -1 value means display all results. Default value is 1.
`query`	For gurus only : direct specification of the sql query. Requires a knowledge of the database structure.
`title`	A part of the title or of keywords (case insensitive).
`year`	Year of publication.

All the provided parameters act as restrictions and are "anded" in the query: an array("author"=>"foo", "year"=>2004) parameter means foo's publications in 2004 for instance.

For each year, the results are sorted alphabetically according to the title of the publication. A sorting according to the month is impossible since this field may be missing, or given as "jan--apr". Displaying the n last publications is hence impossible. However, one can use:

  displayPublications( array("author"=>"last name here", "nbPerPage"=>5, "fullYear"=>true) );

Which will display at least 5 publications, but will continue until the last publication of the last printed year is entirely displayed, since there is no reason to cut the display in the middle of this alphabetical listing.

BibTeX standards

The publication entry types and their optional and required fields are those used by the BibTeX standard styles. However, some optional fields have been made required:

year : which was optional for booklet, manual, misc, unpublished.
title : which was optional for misc.
author : which was optional for booklet, manual, misc.
editor : which was optional for proceedings, and is provided by the author list.
Removed from book and inbook where author replaces it.

The displayed entries thus satisfy the standard BibTeX rules, although the accepted input rules are slightly more restrictive.

There is also a facility to initialize the publications database from an existing BibTeX file -- see Import/bibtex2table in the distribution.

Export

Export is available in bibtex or full text. Simply click on the link "Download the List"

BasilicPlus licence

Original soft: Basilic Version 1.5.10, released on February 14, 2005.
Copyright (C) 2004 Gilles Debunne (Gilles dot Debunne at imag dot fr) Extended by: Arnaud FREY (arnaud dot frey at dpt-info dot u-strasbg dot fr)

http://lsiit.u-strasbg.fr/Software/BasilicPlus

BasilicPlus is based on Basilic and like Basilic it is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

BasilicPlus is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with BasilicPlus; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA