Re: [Bibdesk-users] what is bibdesk?
I can imagine that Tex held some appeal to some people at some point in time, but there is little use I see in it for myself. For me, TextEdit is more easy and flexible. Depends. On the negative side, I find LaTeX code annoying to read and write, and things like encodings and font changes are insane (unless you use XeTeX). I use BibTeX, but I think its style language sucks. Take a look at the biblatex package. Suddenly, even the most complex bibliographic style becomes rather easy to implement ... simon -- Simon Spiegel Steinhaldenstr. 50 8002 Zürich Telephon: ++41 44 451 5334 Mobophon: ++41 76 459 60 39 http://www.simifilm.ch Was soll aus mir mal werden, wenn ich mal nicht mehr bin? Robert Gernhardt - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Bibdesk-users mailing list Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
Re: [Bibdesk-users] text editor integration
On 2007-October-08 , at 11:38 , Christiaan Hofman wrote: On 8 Oct 2007, at 9:16 AM, jiho wrote: On 2007-October-08 , at 08:38 , Simon Spiegel wrote: Just out of curiosity, what would help the non-LaTeX users the most? People have mentioned integration with word processors. What would it look like? Basic RTF scanning wouldn't be too hard. A UI for templates would be nice, too. An UI would certainly be a good idea. I don't think that many users would use BibDesk with its current template system even if it had RTF scanning. Toom many users would be scared by it. I'd use it, but I'm certainly not the average user. I also think that the template system needs improvement to deal with more complex styles. For example more options how to deal with multiple authors/editors or with stuff like 'ibid.'. I doubt whether the template mechanism needs to be more complex, it is already quite complex and capable. See also below. For example, it is quite capable to do something like the standard bibtex styles (the Wiki has templates for abbrv.bst and plain.bst). I also think a GUI to build bibliography styles would be very welcome. I suggested this in back in 2005: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php? msg_id=9787bb9212cc90ffa59662781198cb8a%40gmail.com [NB: sorry the links to the images are broken, I lost them] and it was considered too big to be in the scope of BibDesk at that time. The context seems to be the same today: people want tighter integration between bibdesk and their word processors and, to do that, a way to scan the document for citations as well as to format the references list is needed. If such a UI is build, I would love it to output rtf templates as well as something more LaTeX related (since apparently most current users of BD use LaTeX). At the time of my first post, I thought about writing .bst files, with BibTeX code, but the fact that it is a new language, and a not very user-friendly one, adds some complexity. Now, if this UI could output files suitable for biblatex, which is much easier to use than bibtex, it would be great. I personally have trouble imagining a workable UI to build templates. The template syntax is quite complex, and the only UIs I can think of would either be able to handle only simple templates, or they would be more bothersome to work with than the raw template itself. I don't know how the other managers (like Bookends and Sente) work with their template UI, but I guess they only use a much simplified syntax (in our terms, the equivalent of only value tags). I don't know the RTF template mechanism well but I was thinking at a UI like this (very quick draft): http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/bd_styles_ui.png - On the left, a list of publication types, taken from BibDesk - On the right: . a list of fields, which changes according to the pub type, with mandatory bibtex fields in red. The list of fields is also taken from bibdesk (custom fields appear here) . an Inline citations and a References list fields in which tokens can be drag and dropped to select what will be printed in each case. Plus, one can also write in these sections (but I cannot find how to do this in interface builder). Therefore one can write: [Author], [Year]. [Title], In: [Journal] etc. . an option view, with options depending on each token (here some possible options are shown for the [Author] token, which is probably the most complex to print). . a preview of what the output will look like I think such a UI would be quite straightforward to use and could be interfaced to many template mechanisms (BD own templates, biblatex, bibtex etc.) The cumbersome part with such a UI would be to do the templating for all publication types. There are two solutions I can think of: - never start from scratch: BD provides two of three templates to start from, e.g. an author-year one, a numbered one etc. maybe from the three or four classic bibtex styles - define one reference type as a master (as shown here). The modifications done on this master propagates the all other pub types and then one only modifies them. I think a better road for users for whom building a template is too complicated is to provide an (extensive) library of standard citation and bibliography styles. That could be done mostly by users I think. While this could be an efficient solution, I don't think it will be viable if there is not an easy way to produce the templates. I have experience in doing it for latex bibliography styles: http://jo.irisson.free.fr/bstdatabase/ and most styles were collected by me from publishers web pages (actually the large majority comes from elsevier which gives one template for all their journals: 2000 journals in the database). I received approximately 30 submissions of new styles in two years, 10 of which being brand new, the rest of them being
Re: [Bibdesk-users] text editor integration
On 8 Oct 2007, at 12:57 PM, jiho wrote: On 2007-October-08 , at 11:38 , Christiaan Hofman wrote: On 8 Oct 2007, at 9:16 AM, jiho wrote: On 2007-October-08 , at 08:38 , Simon Spiegel wrote: Just out of curiosity, what would help the non-LaTeX users the most? People have mentioned integration with word processors. What would it look like? Basic RTF scanning wouldn't be too hard. A UI for templates would be nice, too. An UI would certainly be a good idea. I don't think that many users would use BibDesk with its current template system even if it had RTF scanning. Toom many users would be scared by it. I'd use it, but I'm certainly not the average user. I also think that the template system needs improvement to deal with more complex styles. For example more options how to deal with multiple authors/editors or with stuff like 'ibid.'. I doubt whether the template mechanism needs to be more complex, it is already quite complex and capable. See also below. For example, it is quite capable to do something like the standard bibtex styles (the Wiki has templates for abbrv.bst and plain.bst). I also think a GUI to build bibliography styles would be very welcome. I suggested this in back in 2005: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php? msg_id=9787bb9212cc90ffa59662781198cb8a%40gmail.com [NB: sorry the links to the images are broken, I lost them] and it was considered too big to be in the scope of BibDesk at that time. The context seems to be the same today: people want tighter integration between bibdesk and their word processors and, to do that, a way to scan the document for citations as well as to format the references list is needed. If such a UI is build, I would love it to output rtf templates as well as something more LaTeX related (since apparently most current users of BD use LaTeX). At the time of my first post, I thought about writing .bst files, with BibTeX code, but the fact that it is a new language, and a not very user-friendly one, adds some complexity. Now, if this UI could output files suitable for biblatex, which is much easier to use than bibtex, it would be great. I personally have trouble imagining a workable UI to build templates. The template syntax is quite complex, and the only UIs I can think of would either be able to handle only simple templates, or they would be more bothersome to work with than the raw template itself. I don't know how the other managers (like Bookends and Sente) work with their template UI, but I guess they only use a much simplified syntax (in our terms, the equivalent of only value tags). I don't know the RTF template mechanism well but I was thinking at a UI like this (very quick draft): http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/bd_styles_ui.png - On the left, a list of publication types, taken from BibDesk - On the right: . a list of fields, which changes according to the pub type, with mandatory bibtex fields in red. The list of fields is also taken from bibdesk (custom fields appear here) . an Inline citations and a References list fields in which tokens can be drag and dropped to select what will be printed in each case. Plus, one can also write in these sections (but I cannot find how to do this in interface builder). Therefore one can write: [Author], [Year]. [Title], In: [Journal] etc. . an option view, with options depending on each token (here some possible options are shown for the [Author] token, which is probably the most complex to print). . a preview of what the output will look like I think such a UI would be quite straightforward to use and could be interfaced to many template mechanisms (BD own templates, biblatex, bibtex etc.) The cumbersome part with such a UI would be to do the templating for all publication types. There are two solutions I can think of: - never start from scratch: BD provides two of three templates to start from, e.g. an author-year one, a numbered one etc. maybe from the three or four classic bibtex styles - define one reference type as a master (as shown here). The modifications done on this master propagates the all other pub types and then one only modifies them. I think a better road for users for whom building a template is too complicated is to provide an (extensive) library of standard citation and bibliography styles. That could be done mostly by users I think. While this could be an efficient solution, I don't think it will be viable if there is not an easy way to produce the templates. I have experience in doing it for latex bibliography styles: http://jo.irisson.free.fr/bstdatabase/ and most styles were collected by me from publishers web pages (actually the large majority comes from elsevier which gives one template for all their journals: 2000 journals in the database). I received approximately 30 submissions of new styles in two years, 10 of which being brand
