[Feature Request] Auto-sync to a BibTeX File

[Nhaps]

Thank you for considering the request of users who use BibTex. The beta version works wonders: it creates a BibTeX with ALL references and, in addition, syncs any updated references with a keyboard shortcut. Jon's effort has been superb, and it will save those who cannot apple script a lot of time!

Suggestion to users: keep a backup of your own custom Bib format (.fmt) because you will have to rename it as BibTeX.fmt and place it on: your home folder / library / application support / bookends / formats. I say this because the new version may overwrite your custom format with the default BibTeX format.

[Jon]

Note to those reading this...one-way syncing to a linked BibTeX file on demand has been implemented and is coming in the next update.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

We will be providing an improved BibTeX.fmt, but when it is installed it will not overwrite any custom format with that name (which is stored in a different folder, Custom Formats, and supersedes a default format of the same name).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Nhaps]

Top notch!

[naupaka]

Awesome!

[Dellu]

Thank you for @iandol for bringing it up again, and of course, for @jon, for working it out.

You hit a hot key, and, you have all your references updated, ready to be compiled in your TEX document. Nothing can be better than this.

This is really wonderful.

WE can now recommend BE for our scientist friends, with confidence.

[iandol]

Totally brilliant, this is such a wonderful addition, many thanks to Jon for considering this and adding it. Bookends rocks!

[joao]

From the release notes:

"Note that Bookends stores the .bib file's alias, so you may rename it or move it to another location on the HD and Bookends will still find it."

That's a nice idea.

[joao]

As this is a one-way sync, am I right in thinking that any edits of the generated bibtex with an external program will not be changed by Bookends upon subsequent syncs? That would be great for those of use that use Jabref's bibtex cleanup function.

[Jon]

Any edits to a reference in the text file should be preserved (unless you then modify the reference in Bookends of course).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Dellu]

Any edits to a reference in the text file should be preserved (unless you then modify the reference in Bookends of course).

Wow, I didn't expect that one would be possible.

I was a bit worried about the sorting of items in the last couple of days.

Natbib (bibtex) wants the referenced Book to appear after article (incollection) entries for cross-referencing to work.

Code: Select all

@incollection{xxxx, 
Author = Mary, 
Title = Mary's article
crossref = John2010,
}

@Book{John2010,
Title = Title of the book/collection,
Editor = John,
Year = 2010,
}

If you put the book before the @incollection, the crossref will not work. The tradition is to use tools such as bibtool to sort the entries to behave the right way.

I didn't have any knowledge how BE would sort the entries. Now, if we can edit the text file, we can still use bibtool https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... jd-pHQnuvX or some other tool (such as Jabref) to sort the entries correctly so that cross-referencing will work.

[Jon]

On sync, Bookends should only modify the file in three cases: a reference has been edited (the replacement will be in the same location as the original), a reference has been added (it is appended to the file without changing the order of the others), and a reference has been deleted (it's removed from the file but the rest are left as ordered).

Jon
Sonny Software

[joao]

It's working perfectly.

I noticed what I would consider a bug though (others may not). One of my references shows up in Jabref with html tags in the title field. I found out this is because the title in Bookends was in rich text and bold (probably copied pasted there from the title field in the pdf). I would think the bibtex generated file should be output in plain text.

[Jon]

BibTeX markup preserves text styles. It should be output as \textbf{text}, not as HTML.

Jon
Sonny Software

[joao]

sorry... that's what I meant. it was output as bibtex markup.