🚀 go-pugleaf

  Academics who are ranting about EN's record numbers may or may not be
correct in their conclusions, but they are showing remarkable
parochialism.  As an antidote, I'll advocate that Niles try to design
bibliographic database schemes:

- for a small, say 50 MB RAM, post-PowerMac processor;
- able to handle reasonably-sized citation databases of 100-200,000 references;
- good at hands-off interfacing with a variety of online bibliographic
sources and library catalogs (you come in in the morning and EN tells you
what's new in your field from its selection of overnight imports);
- that transparently handle multiprocessor, URL-driven, cross-platform,
distributed manuscripts that will be common in multiauthor,
multi-institution collaboration;

...and that they keep providing a spendid user interface and upgrades that
work, like 2.0.

  The above problems are the kind that a forward-looking software company
has to wrestle with in 1994.  Ignoramuses, please lay off and give them
space to do so!  If you want something to discuss that has some
intellectual content even for the computationally-challenged, ask
yourselves why, in the era of the information superhighway, there has to
be more than one bibliographic database in your field.  Period.

  This comment is not directed at any individual previous poster.
-- 
Ron Larkin (r-larkin@uiuc.edu)
Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign IL 61820