Sonny Software

Hi. I've been using this product foe a couple of days, and I think it's pretty good, but there are numerous subtle and frustrating bugs and user-interface flaws. If these were corrected, the software would be great!

1. Multi-click functionality should behave in a more Mac-like (or MS Word-like) fashion. This works: 2-clicks selects word, three clicks selects line. However, 4-clicks should select entire paragraph. 4-clicking in a text-entry field in Bookends selects only a line, and not the entire paragraph or entire field contents as expected

2. Paste as plain text is a great feature. However, if you paste into a field and then decide you really wanted to place plain text, you cannot place the text as plain text in the same field, even after deleting the text you already placed. You can place it in another field as plain text, however. This is a bug.

3. Often, when placing a cursor in text in a field, the cursor ends up at the head of the field, and not where clicked.

4. When moving the cursor using arrow keys, the cursor disappears and there is a delay before it returns, considerably slowing data entry, since it cannot easily be determined where the cursor is without seeing it.

5. Formatting, such as italics, applied to a field, do not appear in the display pane. Therefore, copying this text does not capture the desired formatting. (This formatting does appear in the reference list of a scanned document) [[correction, this now appears to work, but did not at first. Possibly scanning a document forced this pane to update. But the display pane does not update consistently in any case. Ideally any change to a field or style would immediately be reflected in the display pane, but often the update requires switching between two references.]]

6. Authors entered on separate lines in the author field are correctly formatted in the formatted reference, but do not get alphabetized or displayed correctly in the reference list within Bookends (only the first author is displayed).

7. When placing a citation, a space is inserted before the citation reference. For numbered endnotes, this space does not get removed before the superscripted reference number. One or the other of these situations is a problem (possibly both).

8. When inserting a "see also" or "see Ref" citation, and formatting numbered endnotes, the "See" part appears in superscripted number in the text, rather than in the citation in the formatted reference. This is incorrect.

9. It might be noted that "unscanning" a document does not appear to work in the trial version, but does work now that I've paid for the software.

I'll respond to each point:

1. Click selection in text areas isn't something we control.

2. It's not really a bug (although it may seem like one). The Paste As Plain Text is a misnomer (and changed in Bookends 12). It's really Paste and Match Style. Once you do the first paste, the "style" of the first character takes on the style of the first character pasted. Even if you Undo, the "style" sticks. So the subsequent Paste and Match Style will be in the style. I think I've worked around this in Bookends 12. Also, in Bookends 12 you'll have the option of right-clicking and setting the style back to the default on an individual field (so no need to go through Global Change), which will instantly fix any style issues, too.

3. I'm not sure if I can reproduce that. You might try to see if you can in Bookends 12 public beta (which is Cocoa).

4. That's called submarining, and is a know issue. It's fixed in Bookends 12.

5. The display pane updates as soon as you tab out of the field (or click outside the field). If you don't see this please contact tech support with more details.

6. You tell Bookends how many authors to display in the list view (with various options) in preferences. This is a feature, not a bug! :-)

7. I assume you mean inserted in Word? That's Word's fault, not Bookends. It's being helpful and adding a space. It's part of their autocorrection feature set. This is outside of Bookends' ability to control. You won't see it with other word processors.

8. You control this. If there is a normally superscripted citation that should not be (i.e. when there is leading text), place a _ at the beginning and Bookends won't superscript it: {_\see also \temp cite info}

9. It works in the demo (everything works the same in both). The behavior may have to do with known intermittent AppleEvent errors in Word. There is a section in our FAQ (Help menu) that deals with this.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thank you for the helpful comments.

Concerning 1. I still believe that multi(triple)-clicking should get you to the point of selecting the entire field contents, rather than one line.

Concerning 8. I guess what I wanted was:

Sample text[sup32] blah blah blah.

32. See also Green. 2003. Sample title. Science. 98(14): 55.

It looks like in order to set this up I simply need to make a new type of citation ("End Note") and enter this manually.

drwagner wrote:Concerning 8. I guess what I wanted was:

Sample text[sup32] blah blah blah.

32. See also Green. 2003. Sample title. Science. 98(14): 55.

It looks like in order to set this up I simply need to make a new type of citation ("End Note") and enter this manually.

I don't understand this. Please take a screen snap of the text as you'd like it (after the scan) and post it, and I'll (probably) tell you how to get that.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi Jon. Here's what I envisioned

That's trivial to implement. Contact tech support and we'll show you how.

Jon
Sonny Software

Oh you've got to be kidding. What's the purpose of this forum other than to provide solutions to issues people are facing? I would have thought that, if this were trivial, I might receive the solution on the forum.

We're not going back and forth on this forum. There are too many variables that have to be hashed out (what you've tried, what you're seeing, etc.), and quite possibly files that need to be exchanged (like formats).

Jon
Sonny Software