Sonny Software

Would there be a way of automatically generating a short title from entries in the full title field for existing references? I never entered short titles with my references because the format I used did not require it, but now I have to use a format which does require the use of a short title in subsequent citations, and generating short titles manually for 1130 references seems to be a bit too daunting a task.

Hi gke,

Well, you really only need to generate short titles from the references you cite, which will be a much smaller subset.

I can't think of an algorithm that would be generally satisfactory for generating short titles. The short title may or may not faithfully reproduce the first n words in the title, and must contain enough information to be instantly identifiable to the reader. Easy for humans, terribly difficult to get right for computers (and if you have to edit the ones generated by computer to get them right, there is no point).

Jon
Sonny Software

Hm, that is what I suspected, just thought perhaps there would be a way...taking the first two capitalised words with any other words in between for example? But probably you're right that in the end editing the results to be exactly what is required would probably be more work than just manually changin them.

An automatic production of short titles would be very fine indeed. And this should be very easy I think at least for one sort of shorttitles:

- Lots of books have one or more subtitles and in most cases I want to use the first title as shorttitle.

- Bookends could have a preference to switch on or off the autmatical generation of short titles which also must contain to set the divider in the title field (. or , or whatever).

To make it clear I insert titles the following way: "Title. Subtitle 1. Subtitle 2"

- It should be very easy to copy the word till the first divider and paste it to the short title field.

- If I change the short title manually or insert a completely different one, this should have priority against the automatic generated one. There should also be an easy way of reenter the auto-short title e. g. by deleting the short-title completely or a context-menu etc.

best regards, Reiner