Guidance on switching to Bookends

A place for users to ask each other questions, make suggestions, and discuss Bookends.
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Hi all,

I've had a license for Bookends for some years (including v. 13), but a couple of years back switched over to Zotero. There were a bunch of reasons:
  • the Better BibTeX addon. I generally have to use SBL citations, and there are some technicalities that only BibLaTeX-SBL handles correctly. These matter a great deal for my DPhil thesis, so I've switched to using Pandoc to write, BibLaTeX for citation processing. Better BibTeX has a very flexible .bib export including support for the custom item types I need for SBL, and also can be persuaded to deal well with different languages - even to the extent of giving the correct output for a JSON export vs a Bib export.
  • the Zotfile addon is great.
  • the Zutilo addon tidies up a few other things.
  • the web page importer is awesome.
  • because of the Zotfile options for naming PDFs well, I index them in DevonThink Pro and tend to access them there.
But I miss having a proper Mac app, and an iOS app. With the addition of AppleScript I'm keen to switch back to Bookends. I'd like to figure out the following:
  • having the PDFs named by Author, Date, and Title. Any thoughts on how I can do that?
  • I use BetterBibTex's "extra" field quite a bit, to add in or override the default BibTeX export. For example, SBL style supports a Series abbreviation. By including

    Code: Select all

    bibtex { shortseries: "VTSupp"}
    I can get the correct BibTeX data for the SBL style, which automatically gets added to an index (i.e., this is very worthwhile for me). Any way to do something similar with Bookends' BibTeX export?
  • does Bookends deal with other languages well? In Zotero, I can use a subset of HTML markup, e.g. with a language code to mark the language, and this gets transformed to appropriate TeX in a BibTeX export (while being retained for a JSON export). Some examples:

    Code: Select all

    <span class="nocase">a-na 1/2 GÍN-šú GAL-bi</span>

    Code: Select all

    <i>meʾat</i>

    Code: Select all

    Genesis = <span lang="he">ברשית</span>: the traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation

    Code: Select all

    bibtex{
      title: "Genesis = \\texthebrew{ברשית}: the traditional {{H}}ebrew text with the new {{JPS}} translation"
    }
    The last one is the only real language-specific one, and by hardcoding the BibTeX output I get the correct output in my LaTeX typesetting. The span generates the correct output for Pandoc's cite-proc on a JSON file. But for my field, preserving italics for transliterated terms (in this case, Akkadian) does matter.
My guess is that some of this might come down to some AppleScript export work, hence the interest in Bookends again now that it has AppleScript support.
Jon
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Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Jon »

I'm hoping someone else answers points 2 and 3.

1. In preferences you can tell Bookends to use a format to rename PDFs. Thus, define a format that outputs what you want: a d t. And set it to output just the first author, surname only of that's what you want.

2. Not sure what you're after, but you can edit the BibTeX format to output anything you want.

3. If you're asking if Bookends will automatically bracket non-roman languages with any tags, the answer is no.

But as I said, perhaps others will have better answers for the last 2 questions.

Jon
Sonny Software
Dellu
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Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Dellu »

lyndondrake wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 6:50 pm
The last one is the only real language-specific one, and by hardcoding the BibTeX output I get the correct output in my LaTeX typesetting. The span generates the correct output for Pandoc's cite-proc on a JSON file. But for my field, preserving italics for transliterated terms (in this case, Akkadian) does matter.
[/list]
I don't think the export formatting itself can do that unless you explicitly put the latex command on the Title itself, as in the following example.

Image

Output:

Code: Select all

@Article{Thompson2007,
author = {Thompson, James J}, 
title = {On verbal number in Upriver \textit{Halkomelem}}, 
journal = {}, 
volume = {}, 
number = {}, 
pages = {1–31}, 
year = {2007}, 
doi = {}, 
file = {Thompson2007 On verbal number in Upriver Halkomelem.pdf}, 
url = {}, 
keywords = {}}
This is definitely not a good solution because it will mess up your pdf naming. It will also cause a problem if you want to export other non-bibtex formats.

Post-export text processing is probably the best way to accomplish this.
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Is there a way to have a particular AppleScript fragment run on each field or record as it gets exported?
iandol
Posts: 465
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by iandol »

You should be able to transform specific fields for each record with Applescript. However Applescript can be really unfriendly for a lot of text work, and it is worth remembering you can also use Javascript (JXA) directly like Applescript, or any other language if you parse the resultant BIB file. I run custom Ruby scripts to preserve case on a word by word basis on my BIB/JSON export files for example.

Specifically for languages, you could also consider using unicode in the database and a LaTeX engine that supports unicode directly?
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Is there an export scripting interface? Or do people just tend to postprocess with a script (in whatever language)?
iandol
Posts: 465
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by iandol »

For several export customisations, the Biblio▸Formats manager... GUI will allow you to customise the output format without needing any applescript or scripting, but there is only so much you can do with it...

The next step in complexity/automation is using Applescript/Javascript, for example to automate custom BibTeX output you can use something like: https://github.com/iandol/bookends-tool ... pplescript (this uses the older event based applescript interface, could do with being rewritten) — If Applescript is not agile enough at transforming text, then you can run other scripts as necessary. In my case, I tend to automate using toBibTeX.applescript, triggering custom Ruby scripts to fix case and run pandoc-citeproc to convert to JSON and move it to Dropbox symlinked to my Pandoc data directory all automatically. I'm sure you could do all this in Applescript, but I find other languages less clunky.

The documentation for Bookend's applescript support is great: https://www.sonnysoftware.com/scriptingbookends/
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Jon wrote: Sat May 04, 2019 7:57 am 1. In preferences you can tell Bookends to use a format to rename PDFs. Thus, define a format that outputs what you want: a d t. And set it to output just the first author, surname only of that's what you want.
Almost there on this one, I think. The only little wrinkle is that if I tick "Use (et al.) if > (1) (Authors), for an edited book I want to choose (Editors) from the list instead. This doesn't persist - i.e. if I switch from Edited book to Journal Article and then back to Edited book, the dropdown has reverted to (Authors). Any thoughts?
Jon
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Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Jon »

The popup menu reverts to the first item, but whatever you edited for Editors should still be there. Use the popup menu to view the Editor settings again -- did it remember whatever you entered? If so, you're done.


Jon
Sonny Software
lyndondrake
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Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

ah ok, my error - yep that's working fine
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Next little challenge: I've got a fair number of documents with with references to citation keys generated by the BibTeX export from Zotero. These don't appear in an RIS Zotero export.

Any suggestions on how to import with citekeys intact?

I can e.g. just retain a copy of the Zotero .bib file and use that with my old documents.

Or how workable might it be to import a .bib file successfully?
Jon
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Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Jon »

Bookends can import BibTeX (.bib) files.

Jon
Sonny Software
lyndondrake
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:36 am

Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by lyndondrake »

Jon wrote: Wed May 08, 2019 7:23 am The popup menu reverts to the first item, but whatever you edited for Editors should still be there. Use the popup menu to view the Editor settings again -- did it remember whatever you entered? If so, you're done.
Actually this doesn't seem to persist after all. I can send screenshots, and I'm sure it's meant to work, so I'm a bit puzzled. I can send you the format(s) I'm trying to set this for if that would help? But the UI definitely shows "Authors" ticked, not "Editors".
Jon
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Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Jon »

Send me the format at tell me what the problem is so I can reproduce it here.

Jon
Sonny Software
Jon
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Re: Guidance on switching to Bookends

Post by Jon »

I should have read the documentation myself...there is only one setting for using et al. (text, number of authors, etc.). The pop-up menu tells Bookends to use these settings for Authors, Editors, or both. There isn't a separate set of settings for these 3 conditions. I hope this is clear.

Jon
Sonny Software
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