Thanks for the replies. The big benefits I see in the iPad are in having the option of leaving my desk and sitting in a comfy chair to read journal articles, and in being able to carry bundles of loose documents (e.g. class list, class notes, and course reader for teaching) in a single device instead of a big messy stack. I'm not being very imaginative there. Also, I don't own a clipboard, so the iPad would be filling that void in my life.
I've given Papers a bit more time over the last few days and I'm finding it fairly useful, but the BibTeX export feature of Papers isn't great, and manual editing of BibTeX fields is needed after export (which is lost if the .bib file is re-exported). Without any iPad development skills of my own, this seems to be the least bad solution for the time being, although it probably isn't as useful as Skim+BibDesk if annotations are needed, and it isn't free or open source. Oh, and if I've remembered the news right, iBooks is going to have native PDF support soon, so that might be useful, although my guess is that no metadata about the PDF will appear that wasn't in the PDF properties, and surely there won't be any built-in BibDesk syncing, so it won't be perfect. -Steven > > Message: 5 > Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:06:22 -0500 > From: Michael McCracken <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Bibdesk-users] Bibdesk and the iPad > To: For general discussion about using BibDesk > <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Touch?. :) > In fact, despite my original motivation for Skim (I don't like wasting > paper) - I still often print things, especially if they need a lot of > annotation. > However - the specific benefits I see for reading papers on an iPad are: > > - don't use paper > - capacity - I can carry all the papers > - assuming Skim notes - searchable notes (this has been very useful > for me with Skim) > - easy to send a copy of an annotated paper to many people > - zoom can be very handy for charts n' graphs. > - searchable papers > > > -mike > > On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Adam M. Goldstein > <[email protected]> wrote: >> If you look on the TeX on OSX mailing list archives, you will find some >> discussion of strategies for TeX'ing remotely, using dropbox. Maybe that >> will give people some ideas. >> >> Although I have no doubt that the iPad would be eminently useful for reading >> and annotating papers, I would just like to point out that the latest >> advance in mobile technology simulates um, a clipboard. If there is some way >> to annotate the PDF, then we'll be able to simulate a clipboard and a pen. >> >> Adam >> >> On Jun 9, 2010, at 1:56 PM, Michael McCracken wrote: >> >>> Hi Steven - you're not the only person who'd like something like this. >>> >>> I don't currently have an iPad (or iPhone for that matter) but I >>> expect I will get an iPad soon, and I'd really like to have some good >>> solution for reading papers and adding notes. >>> >>> However, I have no idea what that'd look like, yet - and I don't know >>> what kind of open-source collaboration you'd get on an App-store app, >>> when you have to pay to develop for it, and there are lots of reasons >>> to dislike Apple's dev policies. >>> >>> In the mean time, have you looked at the dropbox iPad app? I haven't >>> tried it, but I understand it lets you view PDFs that are in your >>> dropbox. >>> I suspect that you could tell bibdesk to save your papers to a >>> subdirectory of your dropbox-synced directory, and then you'd at least >>> get the PDFs synced to your iPad easily... >>> >>> NOTE: I haven't tried that - so be careful. I don't see any reason why >>> it wouldn't work, though. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> -mike >>> >>> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 4:50 AM, Steven Robertson >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> A while ago there was a discussion on this list about a version of Bibdesk >>>> and/or Skim on the iPad. It doesn't seem like anything ever came of it, >>>> and the consensus at the time seems to have been that it's not likely to >>>> happen. >>>> >>>> If not a full Bibdesk/Skim App, does anyone know of any App (or >>>> Applescript?) that would allow a user to: >>>> 1. select a smart or static group in Bibdesk; >>>> 2. copy a BibTex file for those items and any linked PDFs across to some >>>> App on the iPad; >>>> 3. read PDFs through the App (with no particular need to annotate them) >>>> using the BibTex information to find the article I'm looking for; and >>>> 4. (ideally) allow me to create new citations with links to PDFs that I'm >>>> reading on the iPad, and then to add these to Bibdesk when I get (although >>>> perhaps that's asking too much of the iPad). >>>> >>>> I know of a few iPad PDF readers out there (e.g. Goodreader) but without >>>> taking a bunch of extra steps it seems that these won't be able to use the >>>> information from my bibtex file to help me find an article - so I'd have >>>> to rely on filenames or my memory to tell me which PDF is which. Papers >>>> exists for the iPad, but I'd much rather use Bibdesk. A key feature (and >>>> the reason why this seemed on-topic for this list) is that it would be a >>>> simple matter to go from a bunch of items Bibdesk to reading them on the >>>> iPad once I get on the train. >>>> >>>> Or am I on a wild goose chase? >>>> >>>> Thanks for any feedback, >>>> Steven >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Bibdesk-users mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users >>>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate >>> GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the >>> lucky parental unit. ?See the prize list and enter to win: >>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Bibdesk-users mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users >> >> >> ------------------ >> Adam M. Goldstein PhD, MSLIS >> -- >> [email protected] >> http://www.shiftingbalance.org >> http://www.twitter.com/shiftingbalance >> -- >> http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=180621 >> -- >> (914) 637-2717 (msg) >> -- >> Dept of Philosophy >> Iona College >> 715 North Avenue >> New Rochelle NY 10801 >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate >> GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the >> lucky parental unit. ?See the prize list and enter to win: >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo >> _______________________________________________ >> Bibdesk-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users >> >> > > > > ------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate > GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the > lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: > http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Bibdesk-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users > > > End of Bibdesk-users Digest, Vol 50, Issue 2 > ******************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
