On 5 Jul 2007, at 12:46 PM, Alexis Gallagher wrote: > Thanks for the help! This is great, and produces just the effect I > was after -- two column preview showing the abstract and the annote > field. > > Let me admit to you, though, I am still quite bit confused about why > this works. Maybe my head's screwed on wrong, but here's a map of my > confusion in case you're curious how the interface looks to > unexperienced eyes. > > When I saw the checkbox for "Export Templates" I thought those > templates were only used for exporting the bibtex library as a whole > (from the File / Export ) command. "Service Templates" sounded more > general and more promising, so I did experiment with those, although > I was aware they might only affect some OS X Service that BibDesk > offered. >
I guess you should've first looked at the Display prefs (see below). then I think it had been more obvious where to look. > Also, It took me a while to understand that the "Preview" button > previewed the bibliographic citation, and was unrelated to > functionality configured by the "Preview Display" setting. (Now my > understanding is that "Preview" button shows the same result as > Preview Display / PDF.) > Originally they were completely unrelated (the Preview Display/ PDF or Text are recent additions). If you have a better suggestion for the (admittedly confusing) naming of these 2 features, please make suggestions! > Looking at the Templates preference pane itself, it seemed like a > central interface for registering template files. That's very nice. > But I don't understand how BibDesk knows which template to use where. > For instance, why does "Preview Display / Template" draw on my new > RTF template? What if I had changed the HTML template? I looked but > couldn't find anywhere a configuraiton for which template file > Preview Display uses. Or is that what the role "Main Page" means? Or > is the name "Default X template" a special value which causes > BibDesk to use that template for previews and not others? (But in > that case, why is it even possible to register templates with other > names?) > This is determined in the Display preferences. The popup lets you choose the export template to use for the preview pane. By default this is the "default RTF Template", as you can see there, but it can be anyone of the rich text templates, including custom ones. We use the export template (and not the service templates) because: 1. we didn't want to add yet another category of templates just for the preview pane (and the preview one can be useful for export anyway). 2. export templates are completely customizable: you can add as many as you want. So adding one specially for the preview pane could be done without changing the existing export templates. For Service there are just 3 templates, and you cannot add another one (because there are just 3 services). > In other words, I feel like there's some great functionality here in > the configuration of preview styles and document export formats, but > to me at least the interface doesn't make it very self-discoverable. > That's partly because these things are added over time. I guess we would get a different interface if we'd all do it over from scratch. But that would be too much work of course. And changing interface is always problematic, as this can easily break backward compatibilities and user habits. Moreover, given the versatility of the functionality it can be very hard to design self-explanatory interfaces. And there's still a bug report open for template help (though it's been partly implemented). > Sorry to sound critical. Just one man's opinion! Like I said, it's a > great app and I'm glad I've found it! > > Alexis > Criticism is always good. For us, who wrote the stuff, things are often obvious, and it's not obvious to us how the users (especially new ones) experience the interface. That's why we always say we shouldn't write the help ourselves. Christiaan > On 4 Jul 2007, at 15:10, Adam R. Maxwell wrote: > >> >> On Jul 4, 2007, at 05:08, Alexis Gallagher wrote: >> >>> I just switched to BibDesk from JabRef, and am greatly enjoying its >>> better performance and more elegant handling of searching and >>> grouping. But there's one feature I'm missing keenly. >> >> That's nice to hear! >> >>> I am wondering if there is a way to configure what fields appear in >>> the "Preview Display" pane. Ideally, I would like it only to show >>> the >>> abstract field and the annote field, side by side each other >> >> I was going to tell you that you can't do side-by-side layout, but >> some experimentation indicates it's possible using a 1 row x 2 >> column table in TextEdit (Format->Text->Table). Make sure to set >> top alignment for both columns. Attached is a sample. >> >> In the template prefs, expand the Default RTF template row and >> double-click on the main page row, then choose the appropriate >> template file. It uses an alias, so you can move/rename the >> template file later. Christiaan covered the rest and pointed to >> the docs, but post back if you have problems. >> >> hth, >> Adam >> >> <column template.rtf> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> --- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express >> Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take >> control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. >> http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ >> _______________________________________________ >> Bibdesk-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > --- > This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express > Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take > control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. > http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ > _______________________________________________ > Bibdesk-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. 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