New unified format preview

[Jon]

Custom citation formats give you the ability to design complex citations (usually footnotes). However, using two formats (one to create the bibliography and one to create the citation) is cumbersome and confusing (even I sometimes have to check to see which values are taken from which format to create the citation).

To reduce this complexity, I've designed a new unified format that I hope to introduce in an upcoming release. The goal is to make conversion to the new format transparent to the user. Once an older format is opened, it will be automatically converted to the unified format and any custom citation information will be transferred from the old custom citation format to the new unified format (and the custom format will be obsolete). Therefore, specifying a custom citation will be no different in principle than specifying numbered or author-date citations. (Note that the built-in numbered and author-date citation options are still available, just not shown in the screen snaps below.)

I wanted to get feedback on this, so comments are welcome. I do plan to hold a private beta test for this new feature (which required an enormous amount of work under the hood), so if you want to do that you can contact me off-list.

What follows is the APA 5th format in the unified window.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

Wow! That is an unexpected but really big improvement. Explaining custom citation formats to friends and colleagues was one of the most troublesome support tasks that I have with Bookends. In addition, this makes things much easier for me as well. (As you wrote, sometimes one can lose track and become confused with the old setup.)

I don’t have any feedback about the proposed implementation at this time – other than that I find your proposition as intuitive as possible with regards to the complexity of the possibilities.

Looking forward to see this implemented! (Hopefully the format conversion does not take too much effort.)

Thanks!

[aechallu]

Interesting, as a user of footnote formats I look forward to it. The old way was not bad for me but this is simpler and better. If you're still looking for testers I'll be happy to jump on board.

Since you're revising the format window, I wanted to ask for a change that, although trivial, always strikes me as time consuming when I set up styles. I use multiple languages, then case and author naming conventions are language specific. That means that I typically need to keep case "as entered", but some formats have the default set to, say, Title case or something like that. These settings are universal to all publication types (journal articles, books, book chapters, etc.). It's only the specific order of citation fields and punctuation that varies. The request is then: Would it be possible to make the Names and Case drop-downs universal rather than specific to the type? (Perhaps there can be a button to make all case/name settings universal to all types within the format.)

On the terms used, and I'm sure this is totally subjective, but I find the term "Order" and "Primary/secondary order" somewhat confusing (e.g. order can mean order of fields or alphabetical/chronological order of citations, which is also something one looks in bibliography options). These are my suggestions formatted as "Instead of" --> "my suggestion":
Order --> Bibliographic citation (or bibliographic reference)
Primary order --> First in-text citation (or just citation)
Secondary order --> Subsequent in-text citations

Thanks

[Jon]

Thanks for the offer, but we're getting pretty close to release.

Name and case settings are not universal because for many publications they differ between Types. This is a feature, not a bug.

Hm, I kind of agree with you. How do people feel about:

     Bibliographic Field Order

     First Citation Field Order

     Subsequent Citations

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

I also have encountered formatting rules that demand different capitalizations.

Jon’s suggestions for updated terms sound a bit more technical but also a bit more correct… no idea if the simpler versions are better or not…

[Jon]

Agreed, clunky. I've cut it down to this

     Field Order
     Field Order (First Occurrence)
     Subsequent (Optional)

You should know what this applies to, bibliography or citation, since that's shown in the tab you pressed.

Jon
Sonny Software

[aechallu]

Sounds good to me