Sonny Software

btw: the German scientific legal community is only starting to use bibliographic software like Bookends. A lot of the young professors work on macs and are starting only now to realize how large the synergies are... A great market. If you can make your program even more superior than it already is, this is a chance!

hedocom wrote:...how many non-english speaking social science users do you have? And do you want to start catering for them to increase their numbers?

This only applies to German, as far as I can tell, which is just a slice of our non-English speaking users (a significant slice, but still). Only 2 people have requested this in 14 years, to put it in perspective.

Same treatment for the editors would be amazing but the authors are by far more important. I understand the your UI argument. You could stretch the UI a little bit vertically and make some pixels of space b/w authors and title. That would make space for the editor options as well. Only a suggestion.

I am sure that there would be a number of users really appreciating that feature and I am sure there is a smart solution for the UI problem.

I'm sure you are right. I know of two. :-)

I add lots of features that benefit a minority of users, but when they require changes in the UI, the bar is higher. And this change would require the addition of at least 3 new controls. Not only that, it would not be understood by 95% of our users, just causing confusion. I'm always trying to improve the UI, and this would be a step backward.

In addition, it seems to be that this can be taken care of by post-processing the bibliography. There can't be *that* many papers one cites in a paper with only female authors that were consecutively in the bibliography. I imagine that in a typical paper we're talking of a couple at most (I'm setting myself up for your telling me that you have many dozens per paper).

Finally, the original requester told me that this citation style was archaic and being phased out, but that some traditional publishers still used it. So if in addition to being language- and field-specific, if it's only used by a subset of publishers it's hard to be enthusiastic about supporting it.

Jon, I am really appreciating this direct conversation possibility with you. Best, H

Thanks, I like discussing these sorts of things with our users, too, and I can be convinced (on occasion) to make changes I otherwise wouldn't have made. And I'll think about this issue, I assure you. But at the moment I can't think of an unobtrusive way to add support for this very language- and field-specific feature.

Jon
Sonny Software

In addition, it seems to be that this can be taken care of by post-processing the bibliography.

That is true!

Finally, the original requester told me that this citation style was archaic and being phased out

At least for legal studies that is not true!

And I'll think about this issue, I assure you. But at the moment I can't think of an unobtrusive way to add support for this very language- and field-specific feature.

Maybe there will be a way as Bookends develops. I am looking forward to it!

Best, H

Since your statement that Endnote and Citavi support this piqued my interest, I searched for the keyword "gender" in the Endnote forums and the Thompsonreuters support database, but the search only turned up one hit that also stated that Endnote is "gender blind", i.e. it does not differentiate between genders. The same goes true for Citavi – I only found a few requests for such a feature but no solution (they stated that they considered to add this feature to the Citavi 3 update, but a search in the up to date user manual for version 3.x also did not turn up any hits).

Seems nobody does this and even though I agree that this would be fine to have, I have never been in the need to use this (even though I publish about 50% in German) and I agree that it would really make the already complex UI even more complicated.

If more people add their voice and request this, then I guess one should reconsider… or if someone comes up with a really good UI (or UI mockup) for this!