thecritic wrote:
Bookend's improvements are undeniable, but for the sake of accuracy, like Bookends, EndNote X has a search field
Unless there is some hidden preference setting, I don't see a live search field. I see a search dialog, which is much like the Bookends find dialog. Quite a different thing.
EndNote offers Spotlight searching of *all references*, and this was improved in EndNote X
Again completely different. Bookends searches pdfs that you have attached and finds the corresponding reference, which EndNote does not do (EN lets you search it from the Finder with Spotlight, and I won't go through the reasons that I find this less than useful again).
In any case, it should be obvious from what I've detailed here that EndNote continues to incorporate new features
Frankly, for a product that generates as many millions in revenue as EndNote, I think that the lack of meaningful development is an embarrassment.
I recently looked at both Bookends and Sente, and decided to purchase Bookends. I thought Sente was good enough in many respects (though overpriced). My decision was made simple, though, because I could not modify an 'import filter' in Sente, so I could not import references from one of the principal databases I use (one might take this to be representative of generally greater flexibility in BE). Below are notes I kept while comparing the two apps; I will not vouch for their absolute accuracy (and some are obviously my own opinion). Also, I'll mention that I am a humanities student, so certain features (aimed at the sciences) are irrelevant to me, while other features are more important.
Bookends: Plusses:
Comes with more reference types, at least in MLA format.
Handles edition and original publication date "natively"; while these can be added in Sente, it would take work to incorporate them into bibliographic formats (if even possible).
**Edit import filters.**
Ability to scroll through references in a database while in individual reference-view window.
Windows: The database view / main window (look and functionality) is better in Sente, the individual reference window is much better in Bookends.
Minuses/glitches:
Fewer / harder to select sorts: Mark, Color label.
[Jon: perhaps the following are minor improvements/corrections that could be addressed?]
When you export references, then import them into another db, attachments are lost.
In Bibliography formatting, counts " (quotation mark) as first word of title, thus "A Title ... rendered as "a Title ... ; corrected with "Don't change case of A" in preferences, but would prefer not to have this work-around.
On the other hand, it doesn't pick up an initial " (quotation mark) in BibTex field.
Attaching a file that is already in the attachments folder, when the "Move to attachments folder" is checked, and "Rename" is not checked, the file is renamed (adding a number to the previous name).
Switching out-of then in-to Bookends results in jumpy window selection.
Sente: Plusses:
Making a minor change to a bibliographic format is easier in Sente, and I didn't feel like I might screw it up in the process; on the other hand, my impression is that making a major change might be easier with Bookends.
I like the user interface showing collections and bibliographies with filters (all together in a list), i.e. the "Library" window element, although I can imagine this would get unwieldy with many collections.
Author names as separate fields (rather than comma separated).
Sort by: Rating (1-5), Status, and (pop-up) Keyword.
*Plugins: looks like it has excellent potential, but see below.
Scripts for processing records.
Larger field for viewing Notes.
Status field (Published, Submitted, etc.).
Minuses:
*must delete (normally formatted) commments from JSTOR BibTex file to import
*can't edit plugin for importing references
When the app is quit and restarted, the format of a bibliography is not preserved.
In the "Information" for a reference, if the Ref. Type is "Book", other fields remain implying another type of reference, e.g. Vol., Iss., Article Title, etc.
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Neither handles double-quote to single-quote conversion in title. [Sometimes there is a quote in the title of an article, e.g. {"To be or not to be": Existential Angst in Hamlet} or some such. The double-quote mark " in the title needs to be converted to a single-quote mark ' when the article title is being quoted inside quotation marks. (That last sentence makes perfect sense, believe me...) This case causes other problems as above.]
Externals:
The database created by Bookends is 'clean': a single file named by the user and saved anywhere; also files for Import Filters, Journal Glossaries.
Sente creates individual files for references (?) with un-transparent names, in ~/Library/Sente/ Sente References/folders; collections and bibliographies are stored in ~/Library/Sente/ with better names, but two files each.
Pointyhead wrote:
When you export references, then import them into another db, attachments are lost.
They shouldn't be. Try exporting and importing to a fresh database. If the attachments aren't exported/imported, contact me directly for tech support and we'll figure out why.
In the case of migrating from 7.7.5 to Bookends 9 they weren't moved to the new attaachments internal field, but that will be fixed in the next update.
Pointyhead wrote:In Bibliography formatting, counts " (quotation mark) as first word of title, thus "A Title ... rendered as "a Title ... ; corrected with "Don't change case of A" in preferences, but would prefer not to have this work-around.
The "A" should be capitalized if there is a leading quote mark. Again, contact me with examples if this isn't working for you.
Attaching a file that is already in the attachments folder, when the "Move to attachments folder" is checked, and "Rename" is not checked, the file is renamed (adding a number to the previous name).
I can't reproduce that here. Please tell me exactly what steps to take and I'll see if I can.
Jon wrote:Frankly, for a product that generates as many millions in revenue as EndNote, I think that the lack of meaningful development is an embarrassment.
This is a little off-topic, but one observes the same long development cycles and apparently slow evolution for many major software developers: Microsoft (Office X & 2004) and Adobe (Acrobat 7 & 8 ) come to mind. I'm not quite sure why this is, since they have such large programming teams. The people at ISIResearchSoft did tell me that making a universal binary of EndNote was a lot of work (wouldn't you agree, Jon?), and I think they deserve praise for having it ready by last August
As far as the search field goes, the only difference in operation between the search field in EndNote and Bookends that I see is that in EndNote it is not "live" -- you have to hit return. Why is this difference significant?
thecritic wrote:As far as the search field goes, the only difference in operation between the search field in EndNote and Bookends that I see is that in EndNote it is not "live" -- you have to hit return. Why is this difference significant?
I just looked at Endnote's website and didn't see a search field in Endnote X's interface either. By search field, we're referring to a box that's always open in the toolbar; in iTunes, for example, you enter text into the top-right search field, and the results list is narrowed. Contrast this with having to select Edit > Find or click on an icon to bring up a search dialog. So, hitting return aside, does Endnote X have a search field, or just a regular ol' search dialog?
Now that that's established, I can see that Bookends' search field still tops Endnote's. Bookends lets you search all fields or restrict the search to a given field, right in the search field. (Take a look at the menu when you click on the magnifying glass icon.)
Thanks for the insights about how you percieve Bookends with respect to Sente (although the forum seemed to have meandered towards BE vs Endnote!). I personally being an endnote user who is looking for alternatives, would agree with extremely sluggish development cycles it has gone through. I feel it has managed to be virtually unchanged from 2000-2006. The "new" features (unicode, attachment support, intel support) in all these six years could easily be concieved by one as a routine update to an extant version for other software. Yet it took endnote from version 5 to version 10 to get there. So endnote is clearly out of the picture as far as I am concerned.
Ideally, my requirements are as follows:
1. Quick search of my database like itunes
2. Allow easy boolean searches to pubmed databse
3. Ability to automate selected query sets at designated intervals and highlight new hits (like new mail indicator in Apple Mail)
4. Retrieve full text PDFs of selected items (ability to use proxies would be great)
5. One click/key shortcut to open attached PDF.
6. Copy-paste references into text edit/ word/ pages and one click reformatting of the pasted references according to selected format
7. Customizable fonts and font styles in reference list and abstract preview panes
8. Customizable bibliography formatting from pre-existing library of styles
9. Automatic Smart-grouping of library as per customizable keywords/date etc
10. Ability to support very large libraries (thousands of items) without hogging all system resources or coming to a crawl
11. Support for data visualization
I realize from what has been said so far, bookends does most of the above except 11 (and perhaps sente does most of it too).
Data visualization is not that critical to me yet, but it is tantalizing to imagine the possibilities that a good marriage between Bookends and Devonthink Pro could bring! My institute has recently aquired volume license for Quosa and Endnote. Between the two, they prettymuch do everything that I have listed above but in a clunky sort of way. Quosa is particulary buggy, unintuitive and quite unpleasnt to use. Therefore I do wish for elegant, intuitive and flexible alternatives – Bookends has only gotten more promising in the meantime.
Well I see that most of the key points have already been discussed, but I just wanted to add that when I first tried Sente, over a year ago now, I was shocked at how poor its handling of various in-text citation formats was. When I contacted the author he was completely unaware of the needs of humanities publishing with regard to this feature and even though it has still been some time since I last checked, I don't think this has improved much since then. So, if you work in the humanities and want automatic formatting of your citations for submission to various journals with different formatting standards, you really only have EndNote and Bookends as choices. Between those two, only Bookends offers iTunes-like organizing capabilities. So if we were going to draw a venn-diagram of these two features: in-text formatting and iTunes-like ease of browsing your citations, Bookends is the only one that has both. Add to this Jon's experience, knowledge, and service, and I think you have a winner!
