Author Case?

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hareiko
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 6:35 am

Author Case?

Post by hareiko »

Dear Jon,

Downloading Refs from PubMed, returns ALL CAPS Authors and Titles for older Refs. "Global Change > Change Case" allows easy conversion of Titles to either Title Case or Sentence case. Using these Options on the authors field converts an author name "SMITH, AG" to "Smith, Ag" when using Title case and to "Smith, ag" when using sentence case. I would like to have an "author case" option that leaves firstname initials after the colon in upper case ("Smith, AG") for easier conversion of author names. This option could be named e.g. "Author, CASE" in the pop-up.
Is that possible?

Best regards
Hans-Reinhard
Jon
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Post by Jon »

It's possible, but difficult to implement properly. In many cases (not PubMed) the authors' full surnames are included. So Bookends would convert "SMITH, JOE" to "Smith, JOE". In the example you gave (Smith, Ag), it would only matter if you were citing the paper, which (a) isn't common for old PubMed papers, and (b) can be corrected by hand once in Bookends. So I guess I'm saying it would be a lot of work for a feature that wouldn't work in many cases and isn't terribly useful.

Jon
Sonny Software
hareiko
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 6:35 am

Post by hareiko »

Dear Jon,

I do work on the history of medicine and then old Pubmed References come up a lot. And converting CAPITALIZED authors is frustrating, as the initials (all but the first) get into lower case. With the "Author, CASE" option that I suggested this problem would be solved. Of course you are right: author case would not work, when full firstnames are given. But in this case I would convert the names using title case. So no problem. Please give this a second thought.

Hans-Reinhard
Jon
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Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:27 pm
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Post by Jon »

I won't promise anything, but I will give it some more thought.

Jon
Sonny Software
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