Sonny Software

One of our users, Paul Szego, has created a vCard format for the iPhone/iPod Touch, and has kindly given us permission to distribute it to Bookends users.

You can get the format from our ftp site (Formats folder, scroll to the bottom of the list):

ftp://sonnysoftware.com/pub

To move your references to an iPhone:

Instructions

In Bookends,

1. Go to Biblio -> Formats and make sure the vCard for iPhone format is checked ON.
2. Select the references you want to export (make them Hits).
3. Select Biblio -> Bibliography Formatter.
4. Choose the vCard for iPhone format, output as plain text, and send to Disk.
5. Click on Make Bib.
6. Change the file format of the file just created from ".txt" to ".vcf"

In Address Book,
1. Open Address Book and create a new group (File -> New Group; or SHIFT + COMMAND + N). Name the group "References" or something to keep things organized.
2. Click and drag the .vcf file you created into the new group. Your references are now in Address Book.

With the iPhone or iPod Touch,

1. Sync it.
2. In Contacts you will have a group named "References" (or whatever you named the group in Address Book) containing all your refs!


We intend to include this in future releases.

Thanks Paul.

Jon
Sonny Software

Very useful. Thanks to all.

While this is definitely not a Bookends problem, does anyone know how to keep the unicode when the file gets changed from txt to vcf? I exported out as utf8, which keeps all my unicode characters, but when i rename it to end in vcf, then are all lost. Any help would be most welcomed.

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UPDATE: Ok, found out on my own. Quickview tricked me to thinking that changing the ending was changing the encoding; that was not the case. Rather, all the encoding was the same. The problem is in the *import* of the cards. To import with unicode (utf8), one must go into "Preferences" of Address Book > vCard, and choose vCard Format 2.1, which will then allow you to set the encoding as Unicode ( UTF-8 ).

This, however, is leading to a different problem; since the cards are exported as Version:3.0, not all the cards are importing. I have exported 1500 some references; only 138 are being imported. Any ideas, again, would be welcomed.

Hi talazem,

I think the vCard iPhone format is still 2.1.

Paul has asked me to post this extra information, too:

1. The iPhone format includes a link to view the articles' url or pdf in Safari (as entered in the "URL" field of each reference), and a link to search the authors in Google Scholar.

2. The references are displayed best when Contacts on the iPhone is set to "Sort Order" and "Display Order" = "Last, First" (in Settings -> Contacts). This ensures that references are sorted by Author first, not Title. If anyone finds other ways of sorting & displaying, please share them with us.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi talazem,

I think I've fixed the issue...

Download the vcard for iPhone file again (I've updated it). It's now 2.1, which handles UTF-8 just fine in my testing *as long as* I create the exported file as ".utf8" (not .txt as I had previously stated), and convert the exported file to a .vcf. This way quicklook, address book, and my Touch see it fine. (Keeping it as a utf-8 doesn't work with quicklook or address book, but converting it to .vcf does! Go figure.)

Interestingly, this works regardless of whether Address Book is set to 3.0 or 2.1/utf8, so that change might not be necessary (but check for yourself to confirm).

The amended instructions are as follows:
In Bookends,

1. Go to Biblio -> Formats and make sure the vCard for iPhone format is checked ON.
2. Select the references you want to export (make them Hits).
3. Select Biblio -> Bibliography Formatter.
**4. Choose the vCard for iPhone format, output as UTF-8, and send to Disk.
5. Click on Make Bib.
**6. Change the file format of the file just created from ".utf8" to ".vcf"

In Address Book,
1. Open Address Book and create a new group (File -> New Group; or SHIFT + COMMAND + N). Name the group "References" or something to keep things organized.
2. Click and drag the .vcf file you created into the new group. Your references are now in Address Book.

With the iPhone or iPod Touch,

1. Sync it.
2. In Contacts you will have a group named "References" (or whatever you named the group in Address Book) containing all your refs!

The file should be updated in the next little while.

P

I've uploaded the revised vCard for iPhone format on our ftp site.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thank you both for this. Any idea why many cards aren't getting imported into Address Book? I tried to import my Book Chapters, and they all imported; when I tried to import all my books (about 600), only 100 or so imported. Same with Journal articles. Thanks.

Just find one that doesn't import and then inspect that one to see what's different from the ones that work.

Jon
Sonny Software

talazem, is there anything common in the missing refs? An empty field that the address book is looking for?

If you'd like, create a vcard from some of the refs that don't import and send me the file in a pm/email. I'll see what I can do.

P

pszego wrote: Download the vcard for iPhone file again (I've updated it). It's now 2.1, which handles UTF-8 just fine in my testing *as long as* I create the exported file as ".utf8" (not .txt as I had previously stated), and convert the exported file to a .vcf. This way quicklook, address book, and my Touch see it fine. (Keeping it as a utf-8 doesn't work with quicklook or address book, but converting it to .vcf does! Go figure.)

By "converting," don't you mean just changing the file extension? In any case, something is not working. I just downloaded your format and followed your instructions, but when I import into address book, all of my European accented characters come out looking awful:

What you are seeing is a MacRoman representation of UTF-8 characters (which are 2-3 bytes in length). Did you set the Address Book encoding to UTF-8?

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:What you are seeing is a MacRoman representation of UTF-8 characters (which are 2-3 bytes in length). Did you set the Address Book encoding to UTF-8?

You're right -- thanks. I did find that the import only works if the vcard format is set to 2.1 (with this . This is not without consequences: I just did some comparisons, and switching the Address Book to vcard 2.1 causes a lot of information to be lost upon export. So one should probably switch the vcard format only for these special imports and then switch it back for everything else.

How can I get a copy of the vcard for iPhone file that uses vcard format 3.0?

Paul hasn't made one. If he, you, or anyone with an iPhone would care to try, I'd be happy to help.

Jon
Sonny Software

The vcard format can be touchy (e.g., it doesn't like empty fields), but given that the iPhone & Address Book (on Macs) use v2.1, I've kept things in this format.

That said, I haven't tried messing with v3.0 so I have no idea what to expect from it. What sort of information loss are you seeing? Maybe we can bridge the gap until a v3.0 version is created?

P

pszego wrote:The vcard format can be touchy (e.g., it doesn't like empty fields), but given that the iPhone & Address Book (on Macs) use v2.1, I've kept things in this format.

Not sure what you mean. The Address Book on Leopard uses vCard v3.0 by default. If the iPhone address book uses 2.1, then SyncServices must convert between the two. Come to think of it, this difference in vcard format probably explains why a lot of country fields on my iPhone became set to France, inexplicably.

pszego wrote: That said, I haven't tried messing with v3.0 so I have no idea what to expect from it. What sort of information loss are you seeing? Maybe we can bridge the gap until a v3.0 version is created?

The information loss only concerns specific address-related info. For one thing, v.3.0 specifies the address format: US, France, Turkey, etc. (i.e. whether the zip code goes before the city name or after, and so forth). There's also a X-ABUID field which may preserve links to photos, although I'm not sure about that. I think that v3.0 also preserves custom labels.

I misspoke, but you are correct: Address Book does use v3.0, but vcards are v2.1 when synced to (or simply created on) an iPhone, so I kept to the earlier version.

As for France being a default, I haven't seen that sort of thing myself (field values being changed). You've probably looked already, but could it be a default setting stored either in Bookends, Address Book, or your iPhone possibly?