Sonny Software

I have made Bookends to rename my files in Author Year Title format.
Here is the formatting:


But, some of the articles have really long Titles; and give out really ugly file names. is there a way to restrict the number of characters so that very long Titled articles will be truncated?
(In Sente, I used to restrict it to 100 characters.)

Bookends restricts the file name to 255 characters, there is no option to make it shorter. It might not be a bad feature to add, though.

Jon
Sonny Software

so, will you record it, or should I write it somewhere else as a feature request?

No need to file a feature request.

Jon
Sonny Software

You can set the file name limit in Bookends 12.7 beta 9 (use the Preferences -> General tab).

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3988

Jon
Sonny Software

This is nice. I'll wait for the stable release to try though.

What I've done with long title is to use short title as the primary option for file names: a d {s^t}

I also like to have clear separators between the elements: e.g. ___ (3xunderline)

The 12.7 beta is actually very stable, but you can wait, it will be released reasonably soon. As for the 3 underscores -- if I understand you correctly, that's easy, just enter them in the format you are using, e.g. a___d___t

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon, this will be a great little refinement thanks! And it is so easy to multiple select and rename all attachments automagically with this updated format, super efficient. This is maybe slightly offtopic, but is there a way to specify FIRST LAST author formatting for a PDF using the Format manager?

No. Formatting is first and foremost for bibliography generation. I've never heard of a style that outputs the first and last author and omits the middle ones.

Jon
Sonny Software

Oh, I havn't seen this. Wonderful!
thank you

Just an update, that Jon did add an option to allow FIRST ... LAST author outputs in the format editor which works wonderfully for PDF renaming.

No, that's not an option.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hm, perhaps you misunderstood. I mean the first author and last author surnames. Here is my Rename PDF format which if you have 5 authors produces the first and last author with an ellipsis:
So an article like:

Roach, N. W., McGraw, P. V., & Johnston, A. (2011). Visual motion induces a forward prediction of spatial pattern. Current Biology, 21(9), 740-745. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.031

becomes a PDF named:

Roach … Johnston (2011) Visual motion induces a forward prediction of spatial pattern.pdf