Request to split place and publisher

Users asking other users for AppleScripts that work with Bookends.
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Nhaps
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Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2011 10:05 pm

Request to split place and publisher

Post by Nhaps »

Fields place and publisher take too much real estate. Since they don't actually hold that much information, it would be a good idea to split them in half, as in pages and year, which by the way take too much real estate as well. Yes, I can work with what I want in Summary view, but we still use the standalone windows a lot to input data etc... Thanks for considering.
Jon
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Re: Request to split place and publisher

Post by Jon »

"Place" is also used for author address for journal articles. A full field is useful there. You forget that for many (most?) of our users journal articles are by far the most common reference Type.

Jon
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iandol
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Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:31 pm

Re: Request to split place and publisher

Post by iandol »

Not sure what this has to do with Applescripts? Anyway, as someone who uses Journal articles mostly, I would also either split Publisher/Address or better move them to Additional fields. Very few ref sources contain addresses and publisher is largely irrelevant for journal articles. So in my many thousands of references, these fields are >98% empty (same for edition and translator for journal artiles). The importance of the internet and the online world means that DOI and PMID are far more relevant to the majority of journal article users IMO. I'm sure if we could do analytics on bookends users databases, this would be a consistent trend.
Jon
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Re: Request to split place and publisher

Post by Jon »

DOIs and PMIDs are just codes/numbers like the ISBN and ISSN, devoid of any intellectual content. Why you want to actually see them on the main screen is a mystery to me. You can redefine fields on the main tab to hold them if you want, but the default locations will remain on the additional fields tab.

jon
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iandol
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Re: Request to split place and publisher

Post by iandol »

Well, one nice idea would be accessing what you can DO with DOI and PMID. You already have a button on the URL field (which you can argue is equally a "code" as a DOI, yet often far less useful). Having some buttons to access the DOI and PMID functions without having to navigate the large second-level context/main menu would be great. Many of us don't just want to reference an item, we want to do a reverse citation search, check links to related research, find the original page for supplementary information. Having some easy to access UI chrome would be a step forward.
Jon
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Re: Request to split place and publisher

Post by Jon »

I disagree that the URL field doesn't contain human-understandable information that some find useful, and I disagree that it's less useful than the DOI, but I'm not going to argue.

Right-click on the DOI field and Bookends will offer to look it up. I don't recall if that also works for the PMID -- but it's not as important there, because Bookends already places that link in the URL field. In an update I intend to make Bookends detect a DOI in any field and show that via a right-click, too.

One more thing -- the edit pane is intended for just that, entering/editing references. You can use it any way you want, but it is not intended for reading reference metadata. The Concise view pane (on the right), especially the Summary view, is designed for that. And in that view the DOI is shown and is live (clickable). Moreover, you can modify that pane any way you like in preferences, having the DOI shown at the top, bottom, or wherever you want.

I don't really have anything more to add to this thread.

Jon
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