On Thursday 21 April 2005 19:41, Rich Drewes wrote: > On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Gerasimos Grammatikopoulos wrote: > > One big issue here is that such third party add-ons for Word are usually > > paid their LOC in gold. > > (LOC?) Lines Of Code :-) It's certainly not their weight (10-20 grams per cd more or less)!
> > Another problem is the quite frequent instabillity derived > > by "overloading" word with such bells and whistles. I can't tell anything > > about EndNote since I haven't used it, but ReferenceManager in its days > > had blown up in my face more than once. > > Yes, I agree that stability can be an issue with Word addons. I have > actually had rare Lyx crashes occur for me that appear to be related to > the pipe communication between Pybliographic and Lyx, and I have also had > some issues with Pybliographic importing reference files from major > journals. (The Pybliographic problems seem to be related to those > journals putting out reference keys that Pybliographic didn't consider > standard format. However, when I tried to import the same file in EndNote > it "just worked". From a user's perspective, "just working" with a > warning message perhaps would be prefereble to failure plus an obscure > error message which is what I got in Pybliographic.) I agree on the pybliographic issues. Unfortunately, pybliographic can offer filtering only for these formats its authors have already seen and "digested". Its pubmed import is rather arcane and that's why I went on with TeXmed. > I have never lost data with Lyx. Thanks, Lyx team. Although Lyx provides another language layer over LaTeX (which works over plain TeX) its files still maintain a rather simple structure that becomes life-saving over crashes and glitches both Lyx-related and system-wide. You can't say the same for office suites, OO.org included, although the latter's choice of xml as the basics under its file formats offers an edge on that area. > > Please keep in mind that you can rather > > easily change "formatting" of the references anytime you please while > > still not messing (and thus loosing time) with the actual archive. > > This is a rather routine capability actually. Word+EndNote can do it too. Again, I can't say anything over EndNote since I have not tried it. If it's such a "routine capability" how come the behemoth of office suites has not included it? To better explain where I stand, let's say you also need the final product to be in .pdf format. For LaTeX-based solutions it's a no-brainer and for OO.org just a button-click away but for MS Word you NEED Acrobat Writer. This brings you to a summary of Word+EndNote+Acrobat and while the complexity of your productivity tools increments, your wallet gets exponentially thinner :-) > Further, I have seen a live demonstration of some features of EndNote and > RefViz that are pretty cool; there is nothing comparable in > BibTex+Pybliographic or addons as far as I can find. It turns out I don't > need those capabilities but I can see their usefulness. > > > You can also > > SQL-query for references if your university library offers such service. > > I for one, consider the TexMed web interface a god send. > > Again, pretty routine stuff. EndNote can do it. I'm not trying to prove LaTeX is better than something I don't actually know. That would be very foolish of me. I'm just saying it can be a great solution for rather advanced editing needs at practically zero monetary cost and ridiculously low computer-resources cost. You could perfectly do your job on a 386 from a console - as long as you dare use vi as a TeX editor. Of course, what you gain on money and resources you have to pay with time, be it "una tantum" for learning the LaTeX skills, or product-related for using that ancient hardware and hostile environment rather than Lyx or other full-blown editors on a shining kde 3.4. > > OO.org's bibliography is far better than whatever "hack" you can get with > > the native MS Word endnotes. > > I'm not sure we are on the same page . . . EndNote isn't a native Word > package of course, it is an add on software package. Yes, that's why I used the "native" indication to separate normal "endnotes" rather that the software called EndNote. I did a mere comparison among bare, out-of-the-box MS Word, OO.org Writer and bibtex. That's why I'm talking about a "hack" regarding MS Word: it can be done, but it's more like shooting yourself in the foot. > I tried OO's built > in bibliographic support and found it pretty useless for now. OO.org can use SQL dig-ups for bibliography and rarely or never screws up numbering. What it CAN'T do, is painless formatting changes - your reference database should be configured to reflect the desired format. Now, that can be a horrible pain! I also admit I never stressed OO.org's ability with more than about 20 references. > Latex+pybliographic was much better than OO's built in stuff for > bibliographic management. I would put Latex+pybliographic as in the same > class as Word+Endote. Word+Endnote have a few more features for > bibliographic management, but the basics are there in both. As I said > there are some advanced features that Word+EndNote+RefViz can do that have > no counterpart in open source AFAIK (unfortunately). I will take it that this is probably the case. In the open source world, "special interest" and "niche market" issues are almost invariably addressed only when a FOSS developer has also a part in the specific issue. Here is an example. When I started using linux, some 7 years ago, sound support was almost a joke. It was the minimum necessary, bare-metal support to just listen to an mp3 or so. I used to dual boot with windows for quite a long time just to use my musical productivity tools. And now? It's been 2 years since I last used windows on a computer I own. Truth be told, I still pay some extra time over the monetary gain since some things require fiddling-with and trial-error sessions. But it's not impossible, nor does it affect the quality of the final product. The solution is simple: the mere increase in adoption rates, but even better the specific feature requests to the usually open-minded devs invariably forces to an evolving solution or at least work-around of the issue. Gerasimos
