As it currently stands, when you open the Publication editor to add a new publication or edit an existing one, all the fields associated with the selected publication type are shown as well as any user-added fields which have content in them. For fields which are considered required in the type definition, the field label is in bold. For those which are optional or user-added the label is in normal font.
While this works fine for most of the default BibTeX types, types with lots of optional fields often end up with several fields which have no content (this is especially true for BibLaTeX users, but also occurs for users who define a bunch of custom fields). I think, though, that this could be cleaned up by a small change to the interface: When the publication editor is opened, only required fields and those with content appear by default. Other fields can be added as needed. Fields so added would have a "-" button by them so that they can be removed if desired (probably with a warning if they currently are not blank). Of course, the current method for doing this (via a menu command that brings up a pop-up dialog) would get kind of klunky under these circumstances. So alleviate this, there would be a "+" button near the bottom of the editor (perhaps in the bar which contains the rating and "Read" check box). This button would add a field. Instead of it bringing up a dialog box, however, the field label would itself be a drop-down box where you could select the name of the field (or type in a custom one). The list would be sorted into two sections, with those listed as optional in the type definition appearing in the first section, and all others in the second. Basically, the idea is to integrate three Publication menu tools into the interface itself; "Add Field...", "Remove Field...", and "Change Field Name..."; by creating the sort of interface that is used by iTunes for defining rules in smart playlists, or by Thunderbird for defining rules in sorting filters. I think said interface would be fairly natural for people to use and have the advantage of only showing relevant fields. Not being a gui programmer, I don't know if these changes would be easy or hard, but I thought I'd throw the idea out there for people to think about and comment on. -- ✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝✝ Br. Samuel (R. Padraic Springuel) PAX ☧ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
