Hi Jirin, I'll try to provide some answers to your questions, more knowledgeable people might correct or amend me.
On 21.02.2009, at 00:30, <[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > I would like to ask where to look for documentation and some kind > of guide for using latest bibdesk. A good starting point is the BibDesk Help and the Wiki. For more specific questions this mailing list and its archives are quite helpful. However, the basic functionality will be easy to grasp while many advanced functions are really not necessary for the first steps. > I know LaTeX, I have basic idea how BibTeX works, in the sense of > having bib file in plain ascii with bunch of articles and cite keys > and with style files for formating bibliographic entries but I am > rather lost with TexShop and Bibdesk. Is there some kind of guide, > documentation or "Getting Started" thing? I am only person using > TeX in my university, so there is nobody to ask. > > I work in the field of chemistry, physics and materials science and > pretty much only database I am using is WebOfScience, with it's > links for fulltexts. > > How do you gather, sort, search, manage, read, insert and use your > literature? There must be better way than having zillion of papers > with cryptic pdf filenames in folder "new" at your home directory, > there must be better way how to use bibdesk in accord with texshop, > but I do not know where to start and whoom to ask? How is your > workflow? > > Jirin.De The first important thing to note is that BibDesk works with plain BibTeX. This means that if you have a simple .bib file with a bibtex item like this one BibDesk will open it and display it correctly. @book{Amer:2002aa, Address = {Durham}, Author = {Amer, Ramses}, Date-Added = {2009-01-12 18:48:24 +0000}, Date-Modified = {2009-01-20 22:33:47 +0000}, Editor = {Furness, Shelagh and Schofield, Clive}, Keywords = {boundaries, Southeast Asia}, Number = {5}, Publisher = {International Boundaries Research Unit}, Series = {Maritime Briefing}, Title = {The Sino-Vietnamese Approach to Managing Boundary Disputes}, Volume = {3}, Year = {2002}} Also, if you create a .bib file with BibDesk this file will consist of entries like the one above and thus be readable and editable with most texteditors too. How do you gather literature? Well, either - basic approach - by creating entries in BibDesk manually (green cross icon "new" in main window) or by using one of the many other import functions. You can import from Google Scholar, from z39.50 servers, from .aux files (produced when running latex and bibtex on a tex file) etc. (Help and Wiki are your friends). Sorting and managing are really done in a way that is very much in sync with other Mac OS X programs like mail, iTunes or iPhoto. Play around and you will easily get it. The most important features here are the keywords and smart or static folders which are all displayed in the left row and make sure you don't get lost in large bib files. I want to highlight one important function here (in part because you asked how to organize papers but also because it is one of the best features BD offers in my view): You can add files to single items in your bib file. Often this will be a pdf of the respective article or a url which links to a website. Basically you just drag and drop the file (or url from your browser) on the respective item in the main window). ALSO: BibDesk can automatically file those files for you. Look at the preferences and the menu AutoFile. I file my papers in a fixed location (~/Documents/Papers) and have "file papers automatically" checked. I also use a custom preset format (%b/%p1%f{Cite Key}%u0%e) which will create a folder within the Papers directory with the name of my bib file and then a second subdirectory with the name of the first author. The file is then renamed according to the respective cite key. This is very handy to keep track of large numbers of files and make sure they are stored logically in a specific place on the HD. Moving on to TeXShop and BibDesk. You say you know some LaTeX so I won't touch on that and rather talk about the integration of BibDesk with TeXShop (or any other TeX editor for that matter). Write your tex file in TeXShop as you would normally do (preamble, right packages and package options, etc.) At the point where you want to insert a citation drag and drop an entry from BibDesk's main window to the TeXShop editor window. You will have to make sure that you use a citation command that is supported by whatever package will take care of the citations (natbib, jurabib, biblatex are among the widely used ones I know). Usually \cite{`Cite Key here'} will be the result. The easy drag and drop is really the main way in which BibDesk and TeXShop interact. It is all about seamlessly integrating the citations into the tex file while BibDesk takes care of the editing of the bib file. I hope this provides you with an idea how and where to start. 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