Greg thornto has written a small script to produce a HTML page of physics abstracts from
the preprint server. The only input required is a list of the numbers of the
papers to be included. It's all very simple - instructions below.
There is also a script to produce an
offline presentation version.
UPDATE: 02/08/2017
It seems that it is no longer necessary to use the university proxy server.
Select 'No proxy' or equivalent in your browser settings if you haven't already.
Generating the HTML page
NB: This currently only works under Linux.
The script "gen_abs_html" does not work well when running from bragg. Please log in to other machine to run the script.
1. Make a file with a list of the paper numbers, including the section name
( astro-ph/ or since 2007 arXiv:)
e.g.
--file listing---------------------not part of file
arXiv:0711.2171 As a recent addition comments are allowed after the paper number.
astro-ph/0302187 So you can safely annotate the refs.new file.
astro-ph/0302207
hep-ph/0011048 These comments will be stripped out in processing.
--end file listing-----------------not part of file
See the current file /remote/hermes/httpd/htdocs/astrophysics/Abstracts/refs.new
for an example.
2. Copy your file to (and overwrite)
/remote/hermes/httpd/htdocs/astrophysics/Abstracts/refs.new
3. cd /remote/hermes/httpd/htdocs/astrophysics/Abstracts
4. run the program gen_abs_html. ie ./gen_abs_html
(The script inserts the name of the person running it, based on `whoami`, into the html.
This name will be replaced by any arguments given to the script, so if Fred Bloggs is running it on behalf of Jane Smith,
./gen_abs_html Jane Smith
will produce the appropriate html.)
5. All done
The script gen_abs_html is very simple (OK, crude) and will probably die or
produce garbage on
unexpected input, or in other unanticipated circumstances.
Let me know ASAP if this occurs.
One problem that may occur is with long authour lists. When the list ends with
'et al. ( xx additional authors not shown)', my abstract extraction code may
fail. In this case most of the bad result will be obvious, but 1 reference may
be dropped altogether.
Offline presentation version
The offline script is intended to provide a minimal set of files
that can be used to present the "New abstracts of interest" in the absence of
an internet connection. The script saves the file to the local directory.
Running it from a directory on a USB stick provides maximal insurance against
network or laptop problems. So, e.g.
After generating the new_abs.html file, as above:
cd /media/usbdisk/abstracts
/remote/hermes/httpd/htdocs/astrophysics/Abstracts/offline
This should copy the PDF files to the current directory and also
produce a version of new_abs.html, in that same directory,
with the PDF (and only the PDF) link pointing locally.