Hi everyone,

This message is to see if the Bibdesk developers are interested in  
adding some support to Bibdesk to enable better interaction with a  
particular e-book reader.  Feel free to ignore if this is something  
that doesn't interest you.  Apologies for the length of the message,  
but some detail needs to be explained.

I'm a long-time BibDesk user on Mac OS X who is now using an iLiad e- 
ink device (see http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad) for  
reading research papers.  I have a master document folder on the Mac  
which Bibdesk maintains for me.  I synchronise that folder onto a CF  
card that the iLiad can use.

There is a hitch, however, due to the way that the iLiad deals with  
documents.  Suppose you have an auto-filed document called doc.pdf  
(the folder doesn't matter).  This file will show up in the file  
browser on the iLiad to be selected for reading.  When the document is  
opened, the iLiad changes the file structure to be as follows:

doc.pdf/doc.pdf
doc.pdf/manifest.xml
doc.pdf/scribble.irx
        
I.e., the file is replaced by a folder with the same name, containing  
the original document, plus some extra iLiad-specific files.  The  
extra files are used by the iLiad to remember reading position, record  
annotations, etc.  This is all transparent to the user of the iLiad  
(i.e., the file browser still just shows doc.pdf).

Obviously this file structure change causes problems for Bibdesk.  It  
is no longer possible to open doc.pdf from within Bibdesk since the  
link points to a folder.  It would be great if Bibdesk knew about this  
alternative file structure and was able to transparently present the  
linked file whether or not it had been moved.

I have some patches that seem to be working, but, although I'm a  
coder, I wouldn't vouch for my Objective C skills and I'm not at all  
familiar with the Bibdesk code base.  My changes seem to correctly  
handle the redirection when opening a linked file and moving all of  
the right things when an entry is refiled.  I've been using the  
modified version for a few months with no problems that I can see.

Anyway, please let me know if you are interested in this  
functionality.  I realise that it's not of mainstream interest, but  
the changes are relatively small, I think, so they shouldn't have a  
great effect on the rest of Bibdesk.  I'm happy to pass over my  
patches and work with you to test changes etc.

I've joined the bibdesk-develop list for the moment, so responses can  
just go there.

regards,
Tony Sloane





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