Bookends wins

[gke]

I just spent several days testing Bookends and Endnote to see which application to migrate to from the discontinued ProCite, and Bookends wins the contest, what is more, regardless of the prize difference. In fact, the only point on which Bookends scores much worse than Endnote is the variety of Reference Types and Fields, but it is enough for what I need the software for. On all other points there really is no comparison: Endnote is bug-ridden, sluggish and excessively demanding on hardware resources, while Bookends seems to have been developed with great attention for detail and the necessary amount of testing.

As I understand from other posts on this forum the forthcoming version 8 will have some more data fields and allow for the differentiation of field names among reference types, which is a good thing.

Something that puzzled me when editing the import filter to import my references from ProCite through Endnote, is why the import filters do not allow one to differentiate the mapping of tags to fields according to reference type, something like "If reference type is Book, put the contents of the editor field in user-field 1-Translator, but if reference type is Edited Book, put contents of editor field in editor field". When adapting the Refer Endnote filter it was not difficult to circumvent this problem, assigning different tags to the Endnote-fields for the various reference types in a revised Endnote Refer Output style, but I felt myself wondering whether the absence of such possibilities for differentiation on the Bookends side could not potentially cause difficulties in setting up filters for importing from sources where one cannot influence the format of the output. How does the future version 8 behave in this respect?

If anybody is interested in more detailed instructions regarding the transfer of references from ProCite to Bookends I will be most glad to provide on request.

Cheers,

Gijs

[Jon]

I just spent several days testing Bookends and Endnote to see which application to migrate to from the discontinued ProCite, and Bookends wins the contest, what is more, regardless of the prize difference.

Hi Gijs,

Thank you for the kind words.

As I understand from other posts on this forum the forthcoming version 8 will have some more data fields and allow for the differentiation of field names among reference types, which is a good thing.

That is correct.

Something that puzzled me when editing the import filter to import my references from ProCite through Endnote, is why the import filters do not allow one to differentiate the mapping of tags to fields according to reference type, something like "If reference type is Book, put the contents of the editor field in user-field 1-Translator, but if reference type is Edited Book, put contents of editor field in editor field"... How does the future version 8 behave in this respect?

The Bookends 8 import filter acts in this regard much like that for Bookends 7. There are several reasons Bookends doesn't allow you to map import by Type. First, most (not all) sites export only one type (articles from PubMed, books from the LOC, etc.). Second, some sites that offer multiple types do not have an easy way to distinguish between them (from a computer's point of view). Third, providing this would add a large amount of complexity to designing filters. Since (relative) ease of use is our goal, and taking into account points 1 and 2, we designed the filters as you see them.

In situations where you absolutely need to differentiate between source types, you can of course post-process them in a text editor to segregate references by type (books, articles, whatever) and use variations of one filter to import them (e.g. My Source Article, My Source Book, etc.).

If anybody is interested in more detailed instructions regarding the transfer of references from ProCite to Bookends I will be most glad to provide on request.

That would be helpful to more than a few folks. Pro-Cite is particularly (and intentionally, I suppose) difficult to get data out of in a way that can be used by other apps (even EndNote on the Mac, I am told!).

Jon
Sonny Software

[gke]

Jon,

I see what your reasons are for not differentiating import mapping by reference type, and I guess you are right that it will be fairly easy to work around possible issues this might cause, as indeed by importing different reference types through different filters.

As for the import from ProCite I haven't got great secrets to reveal. I must admit the people at Endnote helped me quite a bit. I approached them as I could not import my references into the Endnote demo in neither of the two mutually contradictory ways specified in the Endnote User Guide, and it turned out that one cannot actually directly import from ProCite 4.0.3, which was what I was using, into Endnote 8. Allegedly, this is possible from ProCite 5, the latest version, and they asked me to send them the databases so that they could convert them into ProCite 5 format. What they sent me eventually were Endnote libraries in a format prior to 8, can't tell which one it was, which I could convert without any problems into Endnote 8 libraries. This suggests that perhaps one can directly import ProCite 4 or 5 into Endnote 5, 6 or 7, and work form there, but this is something I don't know.

I think it would be possible though to bypass Endnote and write an output style/configuration file for ProCite which exports the references in a format which Bookends can import. The complexity of such a filter probably depends a lot on the variety of workforms and data entries in the oroginal ProCite database as well. I will have a further look at ProCite and report back to this forum on the issue.

Gijs

[William]

I haven't actually tried it, but how good is Bookends' ability to exchange data with EndNotes or Reference Manager. I work with others who use those programs and it would certainly be helpfull. Also, it one devotes many weeks to compiling a reference database, it would be good to know that you could use it in more than one application, if circumstances change.

[Jon]

Hopefully others will reply to this as well.

Bookends has many ways of exporting data that other databases can import. For EndNote, exporting in the Refer format works pretty well. BibTeX is another option. And you can design/tweak formats as you like, of course, to conform to any other application's requirements. Bookends 8 will also export as EndNote 7 XML.

Jon
Sonny Software

[joewiz]

Bookends 8 will also export as EndNote 7 XML.

Hi Jon,

Speaking of XML (a topic about which I know very little), will Bookends be adopting an XML-based format?

Best,
Joe

[Jon]

Hi Joewiz,

No. Bookends is a database. XML is fine for organizing a small amount of data (e.g. a preferences file), but is not suitable for storing and searching large amounts of data. Bookends uses the Valentina database engine -- a completely new version will be used in Bookends 8.

Jon
Sonny Software