Someone with more expertise than me might be able help you with a Script
Group.
If you want to compare the bib file against the original one you still
have, you could use the program BBEdit, that has a function "compare
documents". Since BibDesk doesn't rearrange the order of entries (except
for crossrefs if you use that feature), in all likelihood the entries from
one of the files should appear at the top of the file, and from the other,
on the bottom (followed by a comments section).
On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 11:38 AM, John Clegg <jjcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you very much for the suggestion Jan but for some reason the
> Date-Added field is empty in my merged .bib file, while the Date-Modified
> field doesn’t allow me to distinguish entries from the two separate source
> files.
>
> On Jul 22, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Jan David Hauck <jan.d.ha...@ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> BibDesk actually does store information on the date a bibtex reference was
> first added.
> If you right-click on the columns in the main window (or two-finger
> tap/click, depending on your settings) and select "Add Other ..." you can
> add the Columns Date-Added and Date-Modified. Clicking on them then sorts
> your entries accordingly.
>
> If you open your .bib file in a text editor you also see these fields for
> every entry.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 10:50 AM, John Clegg <jjcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Sorry to barge in on this list, but I’m quite desperate as I have only a
>> few days to submit my dissertation and I am at a loss about how to solve a
>> .bib file management problem.
>>
>> My problem is that at some point in the past I merged two large
>> bibliography files and I now need to unmerge them. Specifically I need to
>> delete all references that came from one of the two original files.
>>
>> Because BibDesk does not appear to store information on the date a bibtex
>> reference was first added, the only way that I can identify which reference
>> is from which original file is from the citekey. In one of the files all
>> the citekeys were constructed with full colons and in the other none of
>> them were, so if I can search the citekey field for a full colon I can
>> select all the references from one original file and not the other. However
>> the Smart Group feature does not currently allow me to match by citekey.
>> Would it be possible to do this using a “Script Group”? Unfortunately I do
>> not have any experience writing scripts and I haven’t found any help
>> documentation on this BibDesk feature.
>>
>> Since I still have one of the original .bib files from which this merged
>> .bib file was created I presume I could also do the unmerge by identifying
>> and removing duplicates between the merged file and original file. However
>> I cannot see a feature for this in BibDesk and I’m not familiar with the
>> command line tools that I presume would be necessary for this.
>>
>> Can anyone help me out?
>>
>> Best,
>> John
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>
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