Learning (a little) from the competition

[danzac]

I was just checking out Sente 5. As usual, I think it looks good but BE still outshines it in a myriad of ways. I won't bother highlighting those, the post would get too long However, we can always learn a few things from the competition, so here's 4 that strike me:

1) I'm still for folder icons for smart groups, and BE group icons aren't bold enough for me. Sente's group pane really stands out, and I like that. I also like the idea of having the top group called "mylibrary" with an icon like iTunes. It just feels and looks more 'Mac-ish'.

2) Sente now does pubmed style searching in all the ISI databases. This is a very cool thing, and can probably help some of us BE users who don't use PubMed, as ISI has the arts and humanities index and social sciences index. If these are databases that can be accessed through BE, I'd really like to see this happen.

3) any thoughts on a keyword browser for BE?


4) The final aspect is something I was planning to bring up anyway, as I hope it will be the next major evolution of BE's list view. Sente has the right side view that can show all of the fields, and in which the fields can actually be edited as well. I would absolutely love to see this in Bookends. I imagine most users stay in the List view for the most part anyway, and others have asked for the ability to add keywords, etc., in the list view. This would answer those things.

Cheers!

[thecritic]

I was just checking out Sente 5. As usual, I think it looks good but BE still outshines it in a myriad of ways.

Please list the myriad.

4) The final aspect is something I was planning to bring up anyway, as I hope it will be the next major evolution of BE's list view. Sente has the right side view that can show all of the fields, and in which the fields can actually be edited as well. I would absolutely love to see this in Bookends. I imagine most users stay in the List view for the most part anyway, and others have asked for the ability to add keywords, etc., in the list view. This would answer those things.

This is huge, because you mostly don't need the reference editor at all (which however offers multiple views, including an attachment view). You neglect to mention that you can also reorder the fields to your liking.

Another area in which Sente is unique in the way in which it handles bibliography formats: you get instant feedback on changes, and it doesn't force you to use arcane character codes and undecipherable field names in order to produce working formats -- it's all done in a graphic interface, with popups and checkboxes.

[Gerben]

One thing I would really like to see in BE: the ability to put folders into folders. This would allow for even more flexible organizing.

I must say the Sente "eye candy" with folders is a bit too much. One thing I really like about BE (and Mellel in comparison to Word for that matter and lots of others ...) is that it is not too flashy, so quiet on the eyes. But it's all about personal prefs of course.

Another thing: I see Sente has now a function to have multiple notes per reference. This seems one step toward creating an ultimate academic tool for both reference management and annotating in one app. But the implementation seems very basic and searching in these notes not too flexible. At the moment I use Slipbox together with BE which works very nicely.

Gerben

[Jon]

1) I'm still for folder icons for smart groups, and BE group icons aren't bold enough for me. Sente's group pane really stands out, and I like that. I also like the idea of having the top group called "mylibrary" with an icon like iTunes. It just feels and looks more 'Mac-ish'.

If you have ideas for icons, please send them to me. We already use folder icons for folders. As for mylibrary, we use All. I really don't see the point of an icon for that.

3) any thoughts on a keyword browser for BE?

I'm not sure what you mean. Please explain a bit more.

4) I would absolutely love to see this in Bookends. I imagine most users stay in the List view for the most part anyway, and others have asked for the ability to add keywords, etc., in the list view. This would answer those things.!

I expect there will be some improvements in this regard in future updates.

Jon
Sonny Software

[danzac]

Before responding to a few things, I need to mention something I noticed in the Sente help files. It now has DOI lookup plugin that will download the corresponding article if it is free, or bring you to the homepage of the article. As DOI's are widely used, I would really like to see this in BE. Crossref.org has machine-to-machine lookup tools - you can find articles by providing only the DOI, as well as based on other info without the DOI. As far as I understand, this means it is open for Bookends to use.
Again, this woulb be hugely beneficial for us 'soft' scientists who aren't fortunate enough to have PubMed. But the DOI links are finally providing a central place for access across the disciplines. JSTOR is in the process of assigning DOI's to collection, and almost every current journal now assigns DOI's. Having strong DOI integration would be hugely beneficial for BE I think.

Now to the questions:
Jon,
RE icons, I don't want to harp on this as its a minor point, but I'm suggesting folders for static and smart groups, with a differnt color and gadget icon designating the smart groups. As for a folder, as a folder is a collection of groups, an icon that looks like a few folders on top of each other would work.

I guess I should say just Browser. It is in Sente, and is in iTunes. Hit command>B in iTunes and you'll see what I mean. Not sure why I called it a keyword browser, except that keywords in the context of a browser would further help delineate and group citations in the browser.

In regards to editing fields in the list view, I'm glad to hear Be is going this way. I don't think this eliminates the Bibliography Window necessarily, but certainly makes the List view that much better - no need to leave the list view for minor edits or even new entries.

Gerben,
I would like more folder in folder organization in BE too.

The notes thing could potentially be very good as far as annotation. I use DT myself, but I can see this being handy. However, if we're talking annotation of articles, I would much rather work towards a skim-like annontation ability for PDF's rather than just appended notes. But this may well be straying too far from BE's function and purpose. I'm pretty attached to DTpro, so I haven't thought too much about better annotation capabilities in BE.

Critic,
I don't want to slam Sente as I think it is a fine product and I wish it well. I'll mention a few things that stand out for me.
1) While Sente's bib.formatting is more intuitive, it has not reached the functionality of BE yet. For science guys doing simple in-text citations this is fine, but for those of us using Chicago-like bib format, Sente can't handle it all yet, at least not in the way BE does it. BE's abilty to ignore empty fields and clean up punctuation problems means BE formatting can handle more complicated formatting.
2) Closely related to the formatting issue, Sente still cannot do foot/endnotes. Again, for those in the hard sciences this doesn't matter, but it makes Sente unusable for anyone using footnotes or endnotes.
3) You don't get support like Jon gives from Sente - actually you don't really get it from anywhere. I've paid hundreds of dollars for software and I don't get this kind of support.
4) Sente works with Mellel, but not as tightly as BE. The scan and unscan feature is only with BE if I'm not mistaken.
5) I use the new linking feature of BE a whole lot. Sente doesn't have this.
6) Unless it is new to Sente 5, it does not have the spotlight search on just the attachments like BE has
7) I find BE's menu much more intuitive than Sente's.
you can't copy text from the PDF viewer in Sente.
9) Does Sente have a journal glossary? I don't think so.
10) BE is faster I find.

These are some of the main things that make me ever-loyal to BE.

[Jon]

Hi Danny,

A few points:

Bookends does have a lookup from DOI (in the Refs menu). It don't download the pdf automatically, but it gets you to the article if it can.

As for icons, I think they're not too busy and the actually convey meaning (unlike the iTunes group icons, IMO). But if other people would like something more perky please speak up.

Finally, I don't see why the browser is such a good thing. It's kind of cool looking, but it's slow and and can require lots of scrolling and clicks to dig down to the data. The Live Search get you to the results much faster.

But these are design and implementation issues, not functionality, so people will certainly disagree.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. You'll be able to output the groups a reference belongs to in a format in the next Bookends update.

[danzac]

Bookends does have a lookup from DOI (in the Refs menu). It don't download the pdf automatically, but it gets you to the article if it can.

As for icons, I think they're not too busy and the actually convey meaning (unlike the iTunes group icons, IMO). But if other people would like something more perky please speak up.

Finally, I don't see why the browser is such a good thing. It's kind of cool looking, but it's slow and and can require lots of scrolling and clicks to dig down to the data. The Live Search get you to the results much faster.

P.S. You'll be able to output the groups a reference belongs to in a format in the next Bookends update.

Wow, BE's updating is too quick for me to keep up when did you add the DOI lookup?
I would still ask for the ability to lookup articles in a DOI database without having the DOI, like form this link http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/

I agree the search in general is much faster than a browser. However, the browser if implemented well is better able to focus down narrowly. For instance, if I search for an author name I'll get hits wherever the name appears unless I focus it to the author field. Once I do that I have , say, 50 citations with that author. Now I want to look specifically that author with a specific keyword. At this point I would need to make the search a general one (not specific to author) which widens the net considerably. Now if I want to see which of those hits are just journal articles, I'm left to sort those out with my eyes.
A well implemened browser could offer very precise findings, by keywords, all the field info, citation type, and perhaps even labels. It also is helpful visually for identifying items. The live search will be the default much of the time, but for instances where you are looking for something very precise, especially in a very large database, a browser is pretty slick.

As to adding groups in the formatting, awesome! What about colors too?

[thecritic]

Critic,
I don't want to slam Sente as I think it is a fine product and I wish it well. I'll mention a few things that stand out for me.
1) While Sente's bib.formatting is more intuitive, it has not reached the functionality of BE yet. For science guys doing simple in-text citations this is fine, but for those of us using Chicago-like bib format, Sente can't handle it all yet, at least not in the way BE does it. BE's abilty to ignore empty fields and clean up punctuation problems means BE formatting can handle more complicated formatting.

Sente can certainly ignore empty fields and clean up punctuation problems! Those are sine qua non!

2) Closely related to the formatting issue, Sente still cannot do foot/endnotes. Again, for those in the hard sciences this doesn't matter, but it makes Sente unusable for anyone using footnotes or endnotes.

Where do you get this? Sente 5 specifically adds this!

3) You don't get support like Jon gives from Sente - actually you don't really get it from anywhere. I've paid hundreds of dollars for software and I don't get this kind of support.

That's your opinion. I've had wonderful support from Third Street Software, at 2am.

4) Sente works with Mellel, but not as tightly as BE. The scan and unscan feature is only with BE if I'm not mistaken.

You are mistaken. Mellel works identically with both.

5) I use the new linking feature of BE a whole lot. Sente doesn't have this.

It's nice -- Sente will have it.

6) Unless it is new to Sente 5, it does not have the spotlight search on just the attachments like BE has

I think it does. It can also rename attachments retroactively, which Bookends can't do.

7) I find BE's menu much more intuitive than Sente's.

Not sure what you mean by "menu." I find Bookend 10's UI to be confusing; Sente's is incredibly straightforward, customizable, and well thought-out.

you can't copy text from the PDF viewer in Sente.

Can you in 10.0.3? You couldn't in 10.0.2

9) Does Sente have a journal glossary? I don't think so.

I'll have to check.

10) BE is faster I find.

It depends -- I don't find Bookends to be a very fast app in general -- the much-hated EndNote is much faster now -- but in any case Sente 5 is faster than Bookends with very large databases (and doesn't require manual cache adjustments) and will almost certainly get faster as time goes on.

[Jon]

I do that kind of search all the time with Live Search. The fact is that although you may get some incorrect hits with a genral search, they aren't common and are easily ignored. For example, leave the Live Search as any field. Type the author name, then keyword, then journal (or any parts of these -- that's a key time saver). In just a few seconds you will likely have just what you want. It would take much longer with a browser.

As for color in a format, styles you set in the formatter aren't carried over to the bibliography, because there just become too many levels of indirection (e.g. reference style settings already override default bibliography settings now).

Jon
Sonny Software

[danzac]

Critic,
Thanks for the clarifications. I was going on my knowledge from Sente 4. I redownloaded Sente 5, opened the help file and typed in footnote as well as endnote. Seeing no hits, I simply assumed it had not been added. I don't seek to misrepresent Sente at all, so thanks for pointing out my ignorance on the matter.

Unless the formatting has significantly increased in 5, I'll stick to what I said about formatting. I do SBL formatting which is disgustingly complicated. BE handles it, Sente 4 couldn't even come close unfortunately. But, it may have improved to the point that it can.

Glad to hear you got good support. I've posted in their forum and didn't receive an answer for quite a while. Definitely not the same as the BE forum. But as you said, it is my opinion.

Glad to hear Sente works identically with Mellel now too, just my ignorance. Last time I read about it in Mellel, there were features specific only to BE. Again, just my ignorance.

the retroactive attachment handling is slick in Sente, yep.

By menu, I mean the menu items in the menu bar.

To each his own, right? They are both fine products and it sounds like you are happy with Sente.

Cheers! (and apologies for any misrepresentation, it is all due to my ignorance)

[Jon]

Glad to hear Sente works identically with Mellel now too, just my ignorance. Last time I read about it in Mellel, there were features specific only to BE. Again, just my ignorance.

To clear up this misunderstanding, at this point there are some features with Mellel that are specific to Bookends. The most prominent are styled text in citations and reference syncing based on shared manuscripts (the equivalent of the EN traveling library).

I think this hijacked thread has gotten quite off course. There are other venues for comparison of applications. If anyone wants to expand on Danny's original requests, let's return to that.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Luhmann]

Regarding Danzac's original requests:

I just downloaded and played around with Sente 5 for a bit. I had to say that I wasn't as blown away by the GUI as I had anticipated. I like the always visible search bar in Bookends for instance, and don't like the fact that Sente hides this when you aren't searching. I also think the attachment inspector in Bookends works better than the way Sente 5 handles attachments - at least from my cursory look.

Still, I think Danzac is correct that there are some things which can be learned here. I would like to see Bookends offer editable citation info in the right pane, rather than having a separate window for this.

I'm not so impressed with the iTunes like browser features. I think something much better could be done, as I discussed a while ago in these forums.

I don't think icons are any big deal.

The search features seem nice, but I can't connect to the ISI DB to test them out. I'll try again later.

[Luhmann]

As I got back to work after writing this post I had an idea which I think would surpass how either program handles editing of citation data.

Imagine if you could look at the preview of the formatted citation and click on a word to edit it! Or if you entered edit mode the data you hadn't yet assigned which was relevant to that particular citation format appeared greyed out.

There is a Mac OS X program which works a little like this already: Address Book. Also many AJAX website allow you to click on an item, edit it, and then save it. Del.icio.us has features like this which work very well.

Just a suggestion. The more important point being that I think there are ways Bookends could learn from Sente without attempting to mimic Sente.

[thecritic]

If anyone wants to expand on Danny's original requests, let's return to that.

Sure. I think that Luhmann's idea is great. In my opinion, Bookends' reference editing window has run its course. It must make it hard for Jon to add fields (that drawer appendage is a decent compromise, but the fields are really too small to see most contents); in general, the fixed size of the fields requires inconveniently that the user click on the field name to view all the contents, and finally the display and tab order of the fields is determined by some sort of esthetics, not by the user's preferences. It's only less of a handicap because few of us enter references by hand.

When I wrote that I find Bookends 10's UI confusing, I meant those icons along the bottom row of the list view window. That button whose paper clip icon seemingly indicates attachments (with the tooltip "display pane") doesn't necessarily display attachments? And then when you're in attachments view, that "display pane" icon and the button with the Preview icon do basically the same thing? And why doesn't the "view" popup in the upper right hand corner of the list view indicate the actual UI state?

[Jon]

Luhmann. I've been thinking something along those lines for a while now, and I'm forming some opinions about how it might be implemented. I think you'll see some improvements before long.

Jon
Sonny Software