Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 20/12/12 09:51, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na wrote:
 My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how many 
 weeks to write
 all that code?
 
 Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

JabRef (http://jabref.sourceforge.net/) ?

A little bit indirect, but I use Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) which 
exports automatically
to bibtex (if enabled)

Rainer

 
 Liviu
 

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

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Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[John Kane]

Zotero?  http://www.zotero.org/
 I use it as an extension with Firefox but it also has a stand-alone version. 
Works nicely with (excuse the bad language ) Word and OpenOffice Writer too.  




 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
To: lyx-users lyx-users@lists.lyx.org 
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 3:51:12 AM
Subject: Re: Using LyX to edit  organise bibliographies
 
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na wrote:
 My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
 many weeks to write all that code?

Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:51 AM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na
 wrote:
  My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
  many weeks to write all that code?
 
 Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

 Liviu





JabRef on Linux---not as good as BibDesk, but close.


S.


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 20/12/12 09:51, Liviu Andronic wrote:
 On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na wrote:
 My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how many 
 weeks to write
 all that code?
 
 Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

JabRef (http://jabref.sourceforge.net/) ?

A little bit indirect, but I use Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) which 
exports automatically
to bibtex (if enabled)

Rainer

 
 Liviu
 

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlDS1VIACgkQoYgNqgF2egpclwCdGuw+vQ0Xwv3fBjoSwPfBeIAY
GsIAn0lLM+KnUrL4N0xHjpWM6/HVKN+S
=6wpm
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[John Kane]

Zotero?  http://www.zotero.org/
 I use it as an extension with Firefox but it also has a stand-alone version. 
Works nicely with (excuse the bad language ) Word and OpenOffice Writer too.  




 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
To: lyx-users lyx-users@lists.lyx.org 
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 3:51:12 AM
Subject: Re: Using LyX to edit  organise bibliographies
 
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na wrote:
 My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
 many weeks to write all that code?

Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:51 AM, Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse nos...@lisse.na
 wrote:
  My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
  many weeks to write all that code?
 
 Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

 Liviu





JabRef on Linux---not as good as BibDesk, but close.


S.


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Rainer M Krug]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 20/12/12 09:51, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse  wrote:
>> My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how many 
>> weeks to write
>> all that code?
>> 
> Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

JabRef (http://jabref.sourceforge.net/) ?

A little bit indirect, but I use Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) which 
exports automatically
to bibtex (if enabled)

Rainer

> 
> Liviu
> 

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlDS1VIACgkQoYgNqgF2egpclwCdGuw+vQ0Xwv3fBjoSwPfBeIAY
GsIAn0lLM+KnUrL4N0xHjpWM6/HVKN+S
=6wpm
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[John Kane]

Zotero?  http://www.zotero.org/
 I use it as an extension with Firefox but it also has a stand-alone version. 
Works nicely with (excuse the bad language ) Word and OpenOffice Writer too.  




 From: Liviu Andronic <landronim...@gmail.com>
To: lyx-users <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org> 
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 3:51:12 AM
Subject: Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies
 
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse <nos...@lisse.na> wrote:
> My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
> many weeks to write all that code?
>
Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?

Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:51 AM, Liviu Andronic wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse 
> wrote:
> > My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
> > many weeks to write all that code?
> >
> Assuming, of course, that one uses Mac. What about Windows or Linux?
>
> Liviu
>




JabRef on Linux---not as good as BibDesk, but close.


S.


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic StudiesPh:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University  Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
many weeks to write all that code?

el

On 2012-12-17 00:26 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:
 Have a look at BibDesk,

 takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

 el

 On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
 Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
 do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
 other bibliography management software?


 [...]

 So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
 answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
 learn other than new software;
 [...]

 
 Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many
 fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has
 people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with
 drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing 
 maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement
 over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it
 meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated
 by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have
 only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do,
 I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this
 purpose it lacks the bells  whistles of dedicated programs. For people
 in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.
 
 Andrew
 
 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
many weeks to write all that code?

el

On 2012-12-17 00:26 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:
 Have a look at BibDesk,

 takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

 el

 On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
 Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
 do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
 other bibliography management software?


 [...]

 So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
 answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
 learn other than new software;
 [...]

 
 Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many
 fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has
 people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with
 drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing 
 maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement
 over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it
 meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated
 by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have
 only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do,
 I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this
 purpose it lacks the bells  whistles of dedicated programs. For people
 in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.
 
 Andrew
 
 

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

My point was that it takes 5 minutes to learn BibDesk and it takes how
many weeks to write all that code?

el

On 2012-12-17 00:26 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
> On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:
>> Have a look at BibDesk,
>>
>> takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.
>>
>> el
>>
>> On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
>>> On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
 Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
 do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
 other bibliography management software?

>>>
>>> [...]
>>
>>> So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
>>> answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
>>> learn other than new software;
>> [...]
>>
> 
> Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many
> fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has
> people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with
> drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing &
> maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement
> over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it
> meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated
> by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have
> only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do,
> I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this
> purpose it lacks the bells & whistles of dedicated programs. For people
> in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



[...]



So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
learn other than new software;

[...]



Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many 
fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has 
people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with 
drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing  
maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement 
over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it 
meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated 
by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have 
only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do, 
I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this 
purpose it lacks the bells  whistles of dedicated programs. For people 
in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



[...]



So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
learn other than new software;

[...]



Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many 
fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has 
people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with 
drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing  
maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement 
over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it 
meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated 
by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have 
only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do, 
I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this 
purpose it lacks the bells  whistles of dedicated programs. For people 
in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 16/12/2012 7:58 p.m., Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



[...]



So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
learn other than new software;

[...]



Old emails never die! This is going back to April. I know there are many 
fine bibliography managers, and any mention of the subject always has 
people bringing out their favourites. (The same thing happens with 
drawing programs.) The impulse that led me to explore editing & 
maintaining bibliographies in LyX was that it gave me a vast improvement 
over doing the same in a text editor (which is what I had done) and it 
meant that I didn't need to learn a new program -- and I was fascinated 
by how far one could push LyX in this direction. I'm retired now. I have 
only the most occasional need for a bibliography manager. And when I do, 
I prefer to use a program I know thoroughly (LyX), even if for this 
purpose it lacks the bells & whistles of dedicated programs. For people 
in active academic or professional life, the criteria are different.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
 Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
 do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
 other bibliography management software?

 
 [...]

 So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
 answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
 learn other than new software;
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

On the Mac BibDesk works with LyX.

el

On 2012-04-20 17:44 , Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
[...]
 This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
 then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
 On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
 Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
 do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
 other bibliography management software?

 
 [...]

 So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
 answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
 learn other than new software;
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

On the Mac BibDesk works with LyX.

el

On 2012-04-20 17:44 , Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
[...]
 This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
 then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

Have a look at BibDesk,

takes 1% of the time you took to re-invent the wheel.

el

On 2012-04-17 10:39 , Andrew Parsloe wrote:
> On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:
>> Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
>> do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
>> other bibliography management software?
>>
> 
> [...]

> So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many
> answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to
> learn other than new software;
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Dr Eberhard Lisse]

On the Mac BibDesk works with LyX.

el

On 2012-04-20 17:44 , Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
>[...]
> This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
> then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is
[...]

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Eric Weir]

On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:

 Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
 database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
 developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
 (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
 from these complexities.

Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero for 
reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some work 
that's been done on this 
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15784/biblatex-export-translator/ but 
perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

The most important thing is the tee-shirt.

Samara Alnafdage

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Nico Williams]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 5:58 AM, Eric Weir eew...@bellsouth.net wrote:
 On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:
 Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
 database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
 developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
 (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
 from these complexities.

 Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero 
 for reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some 
 work that's been done on this 
 http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15784/biblatex-export-translator/ but 
 perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

While we're on the subject of bibliography...

 - Please see bibutils, a tool that uses XML as an intermediate format
so it can convert between a any two of a large number of biblio
formats.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported remote (HTTP) bib repos.  This makes
picking references harder, but it's worthwhile.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported using bibutils so as to consume any
of the formats supported by bibutils.

Nico
--

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Eric Weir]

On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:

 Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
 database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
 developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
 (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
 from these complexities.

Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero for 
reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some work 
that's been done on this 
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15784/biblatex-export-translator/ but 
perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

The most important thing is the tee-shirt.

Samara Alnafdage

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Nico Williams]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 5:58 AM, Eric Weir eew...@bellsouth.net wrote:
 On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:
 Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
 database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
 developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
 (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
 from these complexities.

 Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero 
 for reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some 
 work that's been done on this 
 http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15784/biblatex-export-translator/ but 
 perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

While we're on the subject of bibliography...

 - Please see bibutils, a tool that uses XML as an intermediate format
so it can convert between a any two of a large number of biblio
formats.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported remote (HTTP) bib repos.  This makes
picking references harder, but it's worthwhile.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported using bibutils so as to consume any
of the formats supported by bibutils.

Nico
--

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Eric Weir]

On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:

> Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
> database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
> developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
> (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
> from these complexities.

Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero for 
reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some work 
that's been done on this 
 but 
perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"The most important thing is the tee-shirt."

Samara Alnafdage

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Nico Williams]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 5:58 AM, Eric Weir  wrote:
> On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:23 AM, stefano franchi wrote:
>> Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
>> database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
>> developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
>> (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
>> from these complexities.
>
> Late coming to this topic, but I've been wondering about exploiting Zotero 
> for reference, citation, and bibliography management. I'm familiar with some 
> work that's been done on this 
>  but 
> perhaps there have been other developments elsewhere.

While we're on the subject of bibliography...

 - Please see bibutils, a tool that uses XML as an intermediate format
so it can convert between a any two of a large number of biblio
formats.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported remote (HTTP) bib repos.  This makes
picking references harder, but it's worthwhile.

 - It'd be nice if LyX supported using bibutils so as to consume any
of the formats supported by bibutils.

Nico
--

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 25/04/2012 2:08 p.m., Sam Lewis wrote:

From: Liviu Androniclandronim...@gmail.com
It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library.


+1

Cheers, Sam



Ah! You mean launch another instance of LyX?

Andrew

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 25/04/2012 2:08 p.m., Sam Lewis wrote:

From: Liviu Androniclandronim...@gmail.com
It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library.


+1

Cheers, Sam



Ah! You mean launch another instance of LyX?

Andrew

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 25/04/2012 2:08 p.m., Sam Lewis wrote:

From: Liviu Andronic
It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library.


+1

Cheers, Sam



Ah! You mean launch another instance of LyX?

Andrew

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Sam Lewis]

 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
 It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
 button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
 manager on your ref library.

+1

Cheers, Sam

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Sam Lewis]

 From: Liviu Andronic landronim...@gmail.com
 It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
 button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
 manager on your ref library.

+1

Cheers, Sam

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Sam Lewis]

> From: Liviu Andronic 
> It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
> button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
> manager on your ref library.

+1

Cheers, Sam

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 18/04/2012 03:03 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.


By reference manager you mean a software out of LyX? if so then my 
question remains: why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files? LyX 
should and must have a reference manager, it should at least integrate 
some one.
Mr Parsloe's work can be considered a first step into this direction and 
is a very good one, what remains is to make it more usable


Alex

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it perhaps?

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it 
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be 
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be 
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles 
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and then 
your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a reference 
manager. However if you get all your article from internet then you can 
use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and possibilities, and 
LyX should fit to every user need.

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Liviu Andronic]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gil a...@cphr.edu.cu wrote:
 at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get

Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.


 of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Manolo Martínez]

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 
 El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:
 On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?
 
 Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
 can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
 database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.
 
 Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
 perhaps?
 
 Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
 available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
 always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
 because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
 then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
 reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
 then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
 possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
-- 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic escribió:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gila...@cphr.edu.cu  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.
In this point I am not fully agree. LyX integrates Gnumeric spreadsheets 
into it, can edit LaTeX command directly and so on, off course you must 
have the external programs to do this but they are integrated with LyX. 
So why not to integrate a Bibliography manager also?


It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.
I'm ok with this last point, but actually lyx doesn't have this. So it 
may be nice yes.

of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).
But is not LyX a text editor or a specialized app also? or I am 
missing something.


Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.

Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice 
then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Am Freitag, 20. April 2012, 18:44:25 schrieb Alex Vergara Gil:

 This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
 then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Its the other way round:
Jabref has a LyX knob which transfers the selected reference to the place 
of your cursor in your LyX document. 

Wolfgang 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Alex Vergara Gil a...@cphr.edu.cu wrote:
 El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:

 On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

 El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

 On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

 why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

I guess one way of looking at this---implicit in many of the negative
reactions to your idea of integrating a reference manager into
LyX---is to consider whether BibTeX files really are text files. Many
people, myself included, would say no.

Bibtex files are database files that just happen to be human-readable.
 They follow a formal syntax (no matter how loosely defined) and are
best managed with applications that enforce that syntax. Manual
editing is inherently error-prone---we are not Turing-machines, after
all, and, therefore, very time consuming. Witness the abundance of
syntax checkers, pretty-printers, etc that flourished in the early
years of Bibtex.   Hence, reference managers are the tools of choice,
of which JabRef is an excellent example (and  BibDesk is even better,
unfortunately it's for Mac only).

Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
(such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
from these complexities.


Cheers,

Stefano

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 21/04/2012 2:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic wrote:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gila...@cphr.edu.cu  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.



of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu



I don't think its necessary to be prescriptive (LyX is a document 
processor). LyX has developed. It has access to the whole plethora of 
LaTeX packages of extraordinary diversity (TeX, so I understand, is 
capable of any Turing machine task, hence any programming task). LyX has 
its converter mechanism, and separation of what is presented onscreen 
from what is printed (or pdf-ed). And the important thing for me is 
that I know how to use it (90% at least of my computer time is spent 
using LyX). I look at all the other programs cluttering my hard disk, 
that I may have used once or twice over a decade, but for that reason 
have never mastered. What matters to me now is to have a tool that I 
know how to use, and that can do a particular job, even if it isn't the 
best tool for the job. The critical point is that I know how to use it.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 18/04/2012 03:03 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.


By reference manager you mean a software out of LyX? if so then my 
question remains: why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files? LyX 
should and must have a reference manager, it should at least integrate 
some one.
Mr Parsloe's work can be considered a first step into this direction and 
is a very good one, what remains is to make it more usable


Alex

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it perhaps?

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it 
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be 
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be 
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles 
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and then 
your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a reference 
manager. However if you get all your article from internet then you can 
use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and possibilities, and 
LyX should fit to every user need.

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Liviu Andronic]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gil a...@cphr.edu.cu wrote:
 at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get

Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.


 of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Manolo Martínez]

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 
 El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:
 On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?
 
 Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
 can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
 database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.
 
 Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
 perhaps?
 
 Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
 available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
 always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
 because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
 then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
 reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
 then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
 possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
-- 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic escribió:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gila...@cphr.edu.cu  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.
In this point I am not fully agree. LyX integrates Gnumeric spreadsheets 
into it, can edit LaTeX command directly and so on, off course you must 
have the external programs to do this but they are integrated with LyX. 
So why not to integrate a Bibliography manager also?


It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.
I'm ok with this last point, but actually lyx doesn't have this. So it 
may be nice yes.

of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).
But is not LyX a text editor or a specialized app also? or I am 
missing something.


Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.

Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice 
then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Am Freitag, 20. April 2012, 18:44:25 schrieb Alex Vergara Gil:

 This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
 then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Its the other way round:
Jabref has a LyX knob which transfers the selected reference to the place 
of your cursor in your LyX document. 

Wolfgang 

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Alex Vergara Gil a...@cphr.edu.cu wrote:
 El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:

 On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

 El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

 On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

 why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

I guess one way of looking at this---implicit in many of the negative
reactions to your idea of integrating a reference manager into
LyX---is to consider whether BibTeX files really are text files. Many
people, myself included, would say no.

Bibtex files are database files that just happen to be human-readable.
 They follow a formal syntax (no matter how loosely defined) and are
best managed with applications that enforce that syntax. Manual
editing is inherently error-prone---we are not Turing-machines, after
all, and, therefore, very time consuming. Witness the abundance of
syntax checkers, pretty-printers, etc that flourished in the early
years of Bibtex.   Hence, reference managers are the tools of choice,
of which JabRef is an excellent example (and  BibDesk is even better,
unfortunately it's for Mac only).

Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
(such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
from these complexities.


Cheers,

Stefano

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 21/04/2012 2:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic wrote:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gila...@cphr.edu.cu  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.



of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu



I don't think its necessary to be prescriptive (LyX is a document 
processor). LyX has developed. It has access to the whole plethora of 
LaTeX packages of extraordinary diversity (TeX, so I understand, is 
capable of any Turing machine task, hence any programming task). LyX has 
its converter mechanism, and separation of what is presented onscreen 
from what is printed (or pdf-ed). And the important thing for me is 
that I know how to use it (90% at least of my computer time is spent 
using LyX). I look at all the other programs cluttering my hard disk, 
that I may have used once or twice over a decade, but for that reason 
have never mastered. What matters to me now is to have a tool that I 
know how to use, and that can do a particular job, even if it isn't the 
best tool for the job. The critical point is that I know how to use it.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 18/04/2012 03:03 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.


By "reference manager" you mean a software out of LyX? if so then my 
question remains: why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files? LyX 
should and must have a reference manager, it should at least integrate 
some one.
Mr Parsloe's work can be considered a first step into this direction and 
is a very good one, what remains is to make it more usable


Alex

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it perhaps?

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You can 
have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib database for 
you, by downloading all the data from the internet.


Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it 
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be 
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be 
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles 
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and then 
your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a reference 
manager. However if you get all your article from internet then you can 
use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and possibilities, and 
LyX should fit to every user need.

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Liviu Andronic]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gil  wrote:
> at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get
>
Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.


> of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.
>
Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Manolo Martínez]

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
> 
> El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:
> >On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
> >>why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?
> >
> >Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
> >can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
> >database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.
> >
> >Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
> >perhaps?
> >
> Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
> available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
> always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
> because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
> then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
> reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
> then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
> possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
-- 

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic escribió:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gil  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.
In this point I am not fully agree. LyX integrates Gnumeric spreadsheets 
into it, can edit LaTeX command directly and so on, off course you must 
have the external programs to do this but they are integrated with LyX. 
So why not to integrate a Bibliography manager also?


It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.
I'm ok with this last point, but actually lyx doesn't have this. So "it 
may be nice" yes.

of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).
But is not LyX a "text editor" or a "specialized app" also? or I am 
missing something.


Regards
Liviu

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:

On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

Because, as I said, you *don't* need to edit your bib files. You
can have a program (if your OS is multitasking) to make bib
database for you, by downloading all the data from the internet.

Do you browse the web also from LyX, or you have to move out of it
perhaps?


Ok now I see your point! Nevertheless the fact that you must be
available to have your references from internet doesn't seem to be
always right for me, in several cases what you have are the articles
because you have the magazine or the authors sent them to you, and
then your approach isn't good at all. This is why LyX should have a
reference manager. However if you get all your article from internet
then you can use your approach. It's a matter of users choice and
possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.

I think Philip's point was simply that there are many tasks you don't use LyX
for. Browsing the web or checking your email are two of them; managing your
bibtex files could be another. I might have missed the beginning of this thread
but, when you have used JabRef or some such, what have you found missing?

Manolo
This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice 
then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Am Freitag, 20. April 2012, 18:44:25 schrieb Alex Vergara Gil:

> This is the first time I've heard about JabRef, but if it is that nice
> then it should be integrated into LyX as Gnumeric is

Its the other way round:
Jabref has a LyX knob which transfers the selected reference to the place 
of your cursor in your LyX document. 

Wolfgang 

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[stefano franchi]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Alex Vergara Gil  wrote:
> El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió:
>
>> On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
>>>
>>> El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió:

 On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
>
> why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?

I guess one way of looking at this---implicit in many of the negative
reactions to your idea of integrating a reference manager into
LyX---is to consider whether BibTeX files really are text files. Many
people, myself included, would say no.

Bibtex files are database files that just happen to be human-readable.
 They follow a formal syntax (no matter how loosely defined) and are
best managed with applications that enforce that syntax. Manual
editing is inherently error-prone---we are not Turing-machines, after
all, and, therefore, very time consuming. Witness the abundance of
syntax checkers, pretty-printers, etc that flourished in the early
years of Bibtex.   Hence, reference managers are the tools of choice,
of which JabRef is an excellent example (and  BibDesk is even better,
unfortunately it's for Mac only).

Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only
database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily
developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats
(such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away
from these complexities.


Cheers,

Stefano

-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 21/04/2012 2:18 a.m., Liviu Andronic wrote:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Alex Vergara Gil  wrote:

at all. This is why LyX should have a reference manager. However if you get


Perhaps it _should_ not. LyX has evolved, in the spirit of Linux apps
development, to be very flexible and interact with a myriad of 3rd
party tools (LaTeX, docbook, HTML, Inkscape, various converters,
Sweave, Gnumeric, etc.), and thankfully so. It does not try to do
everything and all, as monolithic Windows programs usually do.
Instead, it delegates many low-level tasks to external programs. If
you have a preference for a reference manager in particular, then use
it to manage your references: LyX will automatically pick up the
changes.

It may be nice, perhaps, for LyX to provide an 'Edit BibTeX refs'
button that would allow to easily launch your preferred reference
manager on your ref library. But that is a different matter.



of users choice and possibilities, and LyX should fit to every user need.


Most certainly not. LyX is a document processor, and as such provides
an efficient environment to author documents. It also provides
facilities to use references. However, it is not in the reference
management business; if you want to manage your references, use a
specialized app (or a text editor).

Regards
Liviu



I don't think its necessary to be prescriptive ("LyX is a document 
processor"). LyX has developed. It has access to the whole plethora of 
LaTeX packages of extraordinary diversity (TeX, so I understand, is 
capable of any Turing machine task, hence any programming task). LyX has 
its converter mechanism, and separation of what is presented onscreen 
from what is "printed" (or pdf-ed). And the important thing for me is 
that I know how to use it (90% at least of my computer time is spent 
using LyX). I look at all the other programs cluttering my hard disk, 
that I may have used once or twice over a decade, but for that reason 
have never mastered. What matters to me now is to have a tool that I 
know how to use, and that can do a particular job, even if it isn't the 
best tool for the job. The critical point is that I know how to use it.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

On 04/17/2012 04:23 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote:

Secondly, why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?


My question was, actually, why should you edit your bib files at all. 
Let the reference manager produce them for you. And then let LaTeX do 
all the formatting.

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why 
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some 
other bibliography management software?

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, the 
need for professional software in many secondary fields evaporates. All 
one needs is something with which one is familiar and that will do an 
adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is called for.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 16/04/2012 04:49 p.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:


On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
 art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
 are off course some issues I want to discuss:

 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
 imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
 desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
 acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when
 you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD}

 and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
 \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib 
files as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant 
blahblah was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, 
exporting as LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* 
more complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be 
translated into LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments 
used for the overall display of the records, not to be translated into 
LaTeX. A few thoughts of this kind convinced me that converting to and 
from *text* rather than LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my 
technical competence).

Ok, but is still posible to do, perhaps in the future someone can.


 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
 in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
 fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.

If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

Yes this is what I meant


then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) 
and simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all 
possibilities would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it 
helpful to associate a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with
Yes, there are many posibilities but there are also some of them that 
are mandatory (author, title, year, for articles journal, for books 
editor, and so on). I will try on yellow notes and I tell you later what 
I get.


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

 my best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 17/04/2012 03:39 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?

Tha answer to this is easy, because LyX can actually do it, is just a 
matter of correct implementation. Secondly, why should I move out of LyX 
to edit my Bib files?  Is not LyX a full text editor? Right now it 
isn't, because of some deficiencies like this that can be solved.


I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.

I'm fully agree with you


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, 
the need for professional software in many secondary fields 
evaporates. All one needs is something with which one is familiar and 
that will do an adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is 
called for.
And this is the reason why most scientist, authors and redactors want 
something like LyX, because it allows you to focus in content and not in 
the edition. The same applies for most softwares.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why 
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some 
other bibliography management software?

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, the 
need for professional software in many secondary fields evaporates. All 
one needs is something with which one is familiar and that will do an 
adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is called for.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 16/04/2012 04:49 p.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:


On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
 art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
 are off course some issues I want to discuss:

 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
 imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
 desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
 acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when
 you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD}

 and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
 \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib 
files as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant 
blahblah was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, 
exporting as LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* 
more complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be 
translated into LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments 
used for the overall display of the records, not to be translated into 
LaTeX. A few thoughts of this kind convinced me that converting to and 
from *text* rather than LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my 
technical competence).

Ok, but is still posible to do, perhaps in the future someone can.


 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
 in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
 fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.

If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

Yes this is what I meant


then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) 
and simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all 
possibilities would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it 
helpful to associate a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with
Yes, there are many posibilities but there are also some of them that 
are mandatory (author, title, year, for articles journal, for books 
editor, and so on). I will try on yellow notes and I tell you later what 
I get.


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

 my best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 17/04/2012 03:39 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?

Tha answer to this is easy, because LyX can actually do it, is just a 
matter of correct implementation. Secondly, why should I move out of LyX 
to edit my Bib files?  Is not LyX a full text editor? Right now it 
isn't, because of some deficiencies like this that can be solved.


I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.

I'm fully agree with you


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, 
the need for professional software in many secondary fields 
evaporates. All one needs is something with which one is familiar and 
that will do an adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is 
called for.
And this is the reason why most scientist, authors and redactors want 
something like LyX, because it allows you to focus in content and not in 
the edition. The same applies for most softwares.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[PhilipPirrip]

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why 
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some 
other bibliography management software?

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?



I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, the 
need for professional software in many secondary fields evaporates. All 
one needs is something with which one is familiar and that will do an 
adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is called for.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 16/04/2012 04:49 p.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:


On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
> I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
> art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
> are off course some issues I want to discuss:
>
> 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
> imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
> desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
> acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when
> you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD}

> and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
> \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib 
files as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant 
blahblah was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, 
exporting as LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* 
more complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be 
translated into LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments 
used for the overall display of the records, not to be translated into 
LaTeX. A few thoughts of this kind convinced me that converting to and 
from *text* rather than LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my 
technical competence).

Ok, but is still posible to do, perhaps in the future someone can.


> 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
> in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
> fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.
>
If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

Yes this is what I meant


then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) 
and simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all 
possibilities would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it 
helpful to associate a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with
Yes, there are many posibilities but there are also some of them that 
are mandatory (author, title, year, for articles journal, for books 
editor, and so on). I will try on yellow notes and I tell you later what 
I get.


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

> my best regards
> ~-o--{}--o-~
> Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

El 17/04/2012 03:39 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

On 17/04/2012 8:43 p.m., PhilipPirrip wrote:

Excuse me for not trying what you've done, but I have to ask first: why
do you think this is better than using Mendeley, for instance, or some
other bibliography management software?

Tha answer to this is easy, because LyX can actually do it, is just a 
matter of correct implementation. Secondly, why should I move out of LyX 
to edit my Bib files?  Is not LyX a full text editor? Right now it 
isn't, because of some deficiencies like this that can be solved.


I don't (not that I've ever tried any bibliography manager) but it is 
better than editing a bibliography in a text editor, which is what I 
used before. So why don't I get Mendeley (or whatever)? There are many 
answers to that: life is short and there are lots of things I want to 
learn other than new software; I already know how to use LyX, I don't 
know how to use Mendeley; my needs in this area are likely to be 
sporadic at most --  plenty of time between uses to forget how to use 
unfamiliar software.

I'm fully agree with you


The same kind of issue arose last year in relation to spreadsheet 
capabilities for LyX. I've spent considerable effort getting the LaTeX 
spreadtab package to work harmoniously with LyX. It means now that on 
those sporadic occasions when I have columns of figures to add up (for 
the accountant for instance), I can stay with familiar software -- LyX 
-- to do something that simply doesn't require the heavy machinery of 
Gnumeric, and trying to remember how to use it. (The struggle -- even 
anguish? -- of the LyX developers getting to grips with git has been 
fascinating to observe.)


Once one has moved out of the professional or academic environment, 
the need for professional software in many secondary fields 
evaporates. All one needs is something with which one is familiar and 
that will do an adequate job on those sporadic occasions when it is 
called for.
And this is the reason why most scientist, authors and redactors want 
something like LyX, because it allows you to focus in content and not in 
the edition. The same applies for most softwares.


A bit of a rant, I know, but it touches a sensitive spot with me (but 
thanks for the question).


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there 
are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when 
you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD} 
and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be 
\'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography 
in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only 
fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I 
have discovered


3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should 
be imported as math, see point 1.
4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported 
as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a 
large dash


Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.

best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 01:21 p.m., Alex Vergara Gil escribió:
I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, 
there are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD} and when you have accents like ó then the exported 
character should be \'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a 
bibliography in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you 
must just only fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and 
so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
 art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
 are off course some issues I want to discuss:

 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
 imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
 desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
 acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when
 you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD}
 and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
 \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib files 
as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant blahblah 
was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, exporting as 
LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* more 
complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be translated into 
LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments used for the overall 
display of the records, not to be translated into LaTeX. A few thoughts 
of this kind convinced me that converting to and from *text* rather than 
LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my technical competence).


 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
 in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
 fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.

If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) and 
simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all possibilities 
would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it helpful to associate 
a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

 my best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:53 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I
 have discovered

 3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should
 be imported as math, see point 1.
 4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported
 as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a
 large dash

 Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.

 best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Alex, I've chosen to use LyX as an elaborate *text* editor with its list 
formatting, its bolding, colour, Outline window, yellow notes, branches, 
etc., but all the time acting on plain text rather than interpreting 
LaTeX commands and displaying them as LyX does `normally'. The main 
reason for this choice (with my level of technical competence) was the 
difficulty in distinguishing, on export to the plain text bib file, 
which LaTeX commands are part of the bib file and which are just 
providing cosmetic effects to aid readability or aid navigation in LyX 
(and are not part of the bib file). Whatever the frustration of not 
having e.g. maths displayed as such, it does mean you can use LyX with a 
certain freedom, almost as a `scratch pad', colouring text here, 
emphasising it there, bolding it, if you want to draw attention to 
particular records or parts of them -- it is all stripped away on plain 
text export.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there 
are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when 
you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD} 
and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be 
\'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography 
in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only 
fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I 
have discovered


3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should 
be imported as math, see point 1.
4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported 
as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a 
large dash


Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.

best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 01:21 p.m., Alex Vergara Gil escribió:
I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, 
there are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD} and when you have accents like ó then the exported 
character should be \'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a 
bibliography in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you 
must just only fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and 
so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
 art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
 are off course some issues I want to discuss:

 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
 imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
 desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
 acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when
 you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD}
 and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
 \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib files 
as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant blahblah 
was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, exporting as 
LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* more 
complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be translated into 
LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments used for the overall 
display of the records, not to be translated into LaTeX. A few thoughts 
of this kind convinced me that converting to and from *text* rather than 
LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my technical competence).


 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
 in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
 fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.

If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) and 
simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all possibilities 
would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it helpful to associate 
a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

 my best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:53 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
 I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I
 have discovered

 3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should
 be imported as math, see point 1.
 4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported
 as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a
 large dash

 Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.

 best regards
 ~-o--{}--o-~
 Alex Vergara Gil

Alex, I've chosen to use LyX as an elaborate *text* editor with its list 
formatting, its bolding, colour, Outline window, yellow notes, branches, 
etc., but all the time acting on plain text rather than interpreting 
LaTeX commands and displaying them as LyX does `normally'. The main 
reason for this choice (with my level of technical competence) was the 
difficulty in distinguishing, on export to the plain text bib file, 
which LaTeX commands are part of the bib file and which are just 
providing cosmetic effects to aid readability or aid navigation in LyX 
(and are not part of the bib file). Whatever the frustration of not 
having e.g. maths displayed as such, it does mean you can use LyX with a 
certain freedom, almost as a `scratch pad', colouring text here, 
emphasising it there, bolding it, if you want to draw attention to 
particular records or parts of them -- it is all stripped away on plain 
text export.


Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there 
are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when 
you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD} 
and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be 
\'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography 
in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only 
fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Alex Vergara Gil]

I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I 
have discovered


3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should 
be imported as math, see point 1.
4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported 
as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a 
large dash


Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.

best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 01:21 p.m., Alex Vergara Gil escribió:
I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of 
art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, 
there are off course some issues I want to discuss:


1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are 
imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be 
desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to 
acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean 
when you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be 
\textsc{ABCD} and when you have accents like ó then the exported 
character should be \'{o}, and so on.
2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a 
bibliography in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you 
must just only fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and 
so on.


my best regards
~-o--{}--o-~
Alex Vergara Gil
MSc. Física Nuclear
Laboratorio Secundario de Calibración Dosimétrica
Centro de Protección e Higiene de las Radiaciones
Calle 20 No. 4113 e/ 18A y 47 Playa
La Habana, Cuba
A.P.6195 C.P.10600
Telf: (537)6824892, (537)6821803
Fax: (537)2030165


El 16/04/2012 04:19 a.m., Andrew Parsloe escribió:

A few months ago I finished working on a project involving a 289 item
bibliography. All the work on the bibliography was done in a text
editor. It irritated me that I couldn't use LyX -- or so I thought at
the time. Now, without the pressure of doing the work, I've had time to
think about it, and to tinker, and I find that LyX is an excellent tool
for creating, editing and organising bibliographies. You can do all
kinds of *cosmetic* things to the bibliography in LyX to make it more
readable and navigable, but these are stripped from the file on plain
text export, so that they don't interfere with the use of the *.bib file
by biblatex (or BibTeX).

I've attached 6 files: bibliography.layout, an explanatory document
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx, two Python scripts txt2bib.py and bib2lyx.py, a
pretty picture, BibRecords.png showing what it's all about, and a
module, bibliography.module, for viewing selected records in a biblatex
style. The layout file redefines some sectional styles (some in a major
way) to enable the initial lines or entry types of records (@book,
@report, @collection etc.) to show up in the Outline window, enabling
easy navigation throughout the bibliography. The up and down arrows at
the bottom of the Outline window allow the easy repositioning of
records. Part and Part* divide the bibliography into major divisions and
allow blocks of records to be moved up or down. The Labeling and
Description list environments are lightly redefined to style data types
(things like author = {foo}, title = {blah},) for easy readability, by
indentation (Labeling) or colour (Description). BibRecords.png shows the
results.

The Python script txt2bib.py does the plain text export, changes the
extension from .txt to .bib and does some tidying up. To work, this
script needs a new format to be defined, Plain text (bib) -- see
EditingBibsInLyX.lyx. In the other direction bib2lyx.py imports a bib
file into LyX 2.0.3 and formats it `prettily'. (These are the first two
Python scripts I've written; I welcome suggested improvements. I work in
Windows so there may be Linux or Mac things that need doing.)

Other advantages of editing bibliographies in LyX are yellow notes,
which allow annotations and reminders to be added exactly where required
without consequence for the exported bib file; branches, which allow the
*selective* export of records; and master and child documents which
allow the large-scale organising of bibliographies.

Whereas a pdf is `prettier' than the LyX file from which it is derived,
for a bib file it is the other way around, but otherwise the
relationship is much the same: you work on the LyX file and shouldn't
have to touch the bib file any more you do the pdf.

Andrew

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:21 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
> I want to personally congratulate Mr Andrew Parsloe for this piece of
> art. It's outstanding and is what I'm looking for a few days ago, there
> are off course some issues I want to discuss:
>
> 1. when you import from BibTeX the coding as \textsc{} or \'{} are
> imported as text, I know this is a first approximation but it will be
> desirable that all the coding are imported as their meaning (to
> acomplish LyX phylosophy) and then exported again as coding. I mean when
> you have an accronym ABCD then the exported line should be \textsc{ABCD}
> and when you have accents like ó then the exported character should be
> \'{o}, and so on.

Thanks for the kind comments. I did wonder about importing the bib files 
as LaTeX files so that commands like \textsc{blahblah} meant blahblah 
was displayed as small caps in LyX, and correspondingly, exporting as 
LaTeX so that the reverse happened, but it seemed *much* more 
complicated: some formatting, like the small caps, to be translated into 
LaTeX,  some formatting, like the list environments used for the overall 
display of the records, not to be translated into LaTeX. A few thoughts 
of this kind convinced me that converting to and from *text* rather than 
LaTeX was the way to go (i.e. was within my technical competence).


> 2. It will be desirable to have the standard sections of a bibliography
> in the definitions, so when you add a new reference you must just only
> fill the sections such as author, journal, title, and so on.
>
If you mean having a blank record available like

@book{,
author = {},
title = {},
...

then you could create one in a yellow note (or a deactivated branch) and 
simply copy and paste as required. In biblatex there are so many 
possible fields that having a blank record containing all possibilities 
would be a hindrance rather than a help. I found it helpful to associate 
a shortcut key (Ctrl+=) with


command-sequence self-insert  = {},; char-left; char-left;

which inserts ={}, and puts the cursor between the braces, waiting for 
stuff to be typed.


Andrew

> my best regards
> ~-o--{}--o-~
> Alex Vergara Gil

Re: Using LyX to edit & organise bibliographies

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 17/04/2012 7:53 a.m., Alex Vergara Gil wrote:
> I'm still trying Mr Andrew Parsloe's work and there are to new thing I
> have discovered
>
> 3. The math insets such as $^{90}$ are imported as text when they should
> be imported as math, see point 1.
> 4. The coding \textemdash is imported as text when it should be imported
> as -- and the -- characters should be exported as \textemdash, this is a
> large dash
>
> Oh! I'm using MS Windows, MikTeX 2.8 and LyX 2.0.0.
>
> best regards
> ~-o--{}--o-~
> Alex Vergara Gil

Alex, I've chosen to use LyX as an elaborate *text* editor with its list 
formatting, its bolding, colour, Outline window, yellow notes, branches, 
etc., but all the time acting on plain text rather than interpreting 
LaTeX commands and displaying them as LyX does `normally'. The main 
reason for this choice (with my level of technical competence) was the 
difficulty in distinguishing, on export to the plain text bib file, 
which LaTeX commands are part of the bib file and which are just 
providing cosmetic effects to aid readability or aid navigation in LyX 
(and are not part of the bib file). Whatever the frustration of not 
having e.g. maths displayed as such, it does mean you can use LyX with a 
certain freedom, almost as a `scratch pad', colouring text here, 
emphasising it there, bolding it, if you want to draw attention to 
particular records or parts of them -- it is all stripped away on plain 
text export.


Andrew