Sonny Software

Please forgive me if I am asking something obvious.
I have been using Bookends for quite a long time in conjunction with Mellel, and Bookends has been a pleasant working companion.
Yet, a couple of days ago, Bookends has started acting out, without any recognizable change in the setup. It seems to be related to a recent update, but I am not sure and cannot reproduce the sequence of events having led to the issue.

Here is what occurs. The data in each of my 1800 bibliographic entries look fine when I edit a record. The formatted bibliographic entry at the bottom of the Bookends screen, however, now contains unwanted formatting, such as the tags \emph{...} instead of italics.
Same thing when I export a reference in Mellel or in any other application. This is unrelated to the type of format and the same problem occurs regardless of the style chosen, such as Chicago 15th B or MLA, etc. The other disturbing manifestation is that diacritical marks are now removed from the letter above which they should look. Example: "o¯" instead of "ō."

Let me provide a complete example of one bibliographic entry, first as it appears now, and secondly how it should be.
1. Adolphson, Mikael S. 2007. \emph{The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and So¯hei in Japanese History. }Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

2. Adolphson, Mikael S. 2007. The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sōhei in Japanese History. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

I am sure that this is not related to my particular computer or Mac OS X configuration (Lion 10.7.3), as I am synchronizing the data across my laptop and desktop every day. The same problem occurs on both machines. I have also tried to check the integrity of the database by using Library Maintenance > Verify.
Now I remember having seen the message "Some references require Unicode normalization." Could my problem be the result of this "normalization"?

I have backups of my library on an external disk, accessible with time machine. The only trouble is that I am not sure how long ago the problem occurred. I have tried restoring libraries created several weeks ago, but to no avail.

Please be so kind to provide a hint, because I am really lost.
Thank you in advance for your time.

Looks like you accidentally turned on BibTeX formatting. I would look in Preferences>BibTeX and see if 'Enable BibTeX' is ticked. If so, untick it.

The diagnosis is correct, nicka, but the solution is a bit different. Outputting in "BibteX" markup is specified in Biblio -> Bibliography Formatter. The setting there will be BibteX (in this instance) and should be changed to Styled Text.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon, thank you so much for your precise guidance.
I don't remember how I managed to fool around with the Bibliography Formatter, but your intelligent advice allowed me to fix the problem.
Issue resolved!

I once ran across this situation or something very similar to it as well, and it confused me for a long time. I kept getting plain text formatted views when I wanted styled text, and I could not figure out why. When I then suddenly started seeing HTML in the formatted view, I finally realized that a change I had made in the setting in the bibliography formatter affected the formatted view.

Might I suggest that some mention of the interaction between the formatted view (p. 73) and the bibliography formatter (p. 273) be made in the user manual?

The formatted display shows exactly what you'll see in a formatted bibliography. I'll add a comment to the User Guide section on the formatted display mentioning that it uses the settings in the Bibliography Formatter, with a link to that section.

Jon
Sonny Software