No subject

obviously special, and needs to do a lot of things;

1. Lets say after performing a search, a particular 'source' article
is selected from PubMed (lets say with PubMed Unique Identifier
PMID:1234567).
2) The citation data returned from PubMed is used to automatically
instantiate a "PubMed source" template, automatically passing data to
the various fields of the template.
3) This 'instance' is saved into a 'standard' source template page,
something like "Template:PubMed source:PMID:1234567".
4) Finally the 'standard' template is automatically embedded
(transcluded) into the "Template:Cite:myKey" page.
5) The user is left viewing the saved "Template:Cite:myKey" page,
which contains only "{{PubMed source:PMID:1234567}}".

So... (at least) two things have now happened. 1) A "PubMed source"
template has been automatically instantiated with data from PubMed and
saved as a 'standard source'. ii) A layer of abstraction has been put
between the standard source and the mnemonic via template
transclusion. Viewing "Template:Cite:myKey" or "Template:PubMed
source:PMID:1234567" presents all the citation details (including the
abstract).

Viewing a page which calls {{Cite:myKey}} requires more magic ...

The citation should appear as a number in the text and automatically
add itself to a reference listing with a fixed style at the bottom of
the page (like Categories do). This should not require the user to
call a specific <references/> tag, but should happen automatically.
The format of the citation needs to be controlled by CSS.


== Sooo... ==

I now see that almost all of the above is done by PagesOnDemand and
ProcessCite as demonstrated on EcoliWiki. What is missing is the AJAX
search box and the automatic formatting (via CSS). I think that using
the above as a starting point, I can code the AJAX search box, first
presenting the user with a search interface, allowing a selection to
be made, filling in the template and showing the resulting page.
However, I am not sure how to begin to make the references appear
automatically in the way categories do, and I don't know how to set up
the layout to work in conjunction with CSS ...

Any feedback on any of the above (polite or otherwise) is most welcome!


Cheers,

Dan.



P.S.

The following list of extensions look relevant for this project;

* Bibtex
* Cite
* ProcessCite
* DynamicPageList
* CreateArticle
* CreateBox
* PagesOnDemand
* PMID_OnDemand
* Biblio

Also;
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/Magic_links