Sonny Software

I'm a recent convert to Bookends from EndNote. I was a user of EN since version 1.0, and moved to Bookends for all the usual reasons -- Thomson's wretched upgrade policies, EN 8's endless bugs and infelicities, etc.

Overall, I'm pleased with Bookends -- I had looked at it before (maybe version 7-something?), but had found the interface too un-Mac OS X-like. The app has come a long way in v. 8.x and, well, it just seems to work, which EndNote has not for some time now...

I have a few observations/suggestions/mild criticisms -- things I hope Jonathan will take into account in future versions...

- Import from EndNote was mostly painfree. One glitch that I've had to manually correct: The editors list of of all my EndNote "Edited books" references were placed by Bookends into the "Authors" field, and not the "Editors" field. A few ref title fields were reset from my default font (Optima) to Ariel, but I can't discern a pattern there.

- I agree with others on this list that a dedicated "Translators" name field is badly needed. As someone who works daily in two languages, I often jump back and forth between translated and untranslated versions of a text, and need to be able to cite both versions easily.

- I believe that there should also be a dedicated "Edition" field -- I'm now using one of my user-specified fields for that -- many of the books that I work with go through multiple editions, and it's important to capture that information.

- I don't see a need, as some have suggested, for Spotlight integration. Bookends' search features are remarkably powerful. The rare occasion when a Spotlight search would be useful would seem to me to be outweighed by a lot of database overhead.

- The widgets at the top of the list window (my usual way of browsing references) seem to me a little clumsily-spaced: the "gear" button should be moved, or perhaps the "i" button, so that they are more evenly-spaced in relation to the edges of the fields below them. Or: a more radical idea: dispense with the "New Group" popup menu altogether, and merge its functions withe the "gear" button (aren't they closely related anyway?)

- I realize that the "Show reference" button in the List view pulses because it's the default button in that view, but I find this *very* distracting. Is this button needed? Is it enough to be able to double-click an item in the list, or press return when an item is selected -- that would let you get rid of the button.

- I don't think that the digits in the "Showing xxx of xxx hits" should be in bold face. This throws the typeforms of each of these words slightly out of alignment. I don't think that the bold face adds any information.

- Is there no way to resize the scrolling list on the left edge of the Term Lists window? The names of journals and long keywords (I often use as a keyword the title of a book, if the ref is a critical study of that book) are often "scrunched" in the current width of the list, and difficult to read.

These are mostly minor problems. All in all, Bookends is a fine alternative to EndNote, and it's evident from this discussion board that Jonathan's support is far, far better than Thomson's monopolistic disregard for Mac users.

TH

tharpold wrote: A few ref title fields were reset from my default font (Optima) to Ariel, but I can't discern a pattern there.

Hi tharpold,

Bookends will preserve the font info that EN outputs (in XML). Sometimes I have found that the EN output is incorrect. Of course, Bookends could have made an error, too.

Frankly, I recommend stripping out the font info in Bookends (set to default) and using the Bookends Preferences to make it Optima. That will make your bibliographies flexible. If you "fix" the font as Optima in the fields, that's the way it will appear in your bibliographies, too.

- I agree with others on this list that a dedicated "Translators" name field is badly needed. As someone who works daily in two languages, I often jump back and forth between translated and untranslated versions of a text, and need to be able to cite both versions easily.

- I believe that there should also be a dedicated "Edition" field -- I'm now using one of my user-specified fields for that -- many of the books that I work with go through multiple editions, and it's important to capture that information.

Hm, books and book chapters do have dedicated Translator and Edition fields. And in Bookends 8.1.1 you'll be able to tell Bookends to treat the Translator field as a name when creating a bibliography.

- The widgets at the top of the list window (my usual way of browsing references) seem to me a little clumsily-spaced: the "gear" button should be moved, or perhaps the "i" button, so that they are more evenly-spaced in relation to the edges of the fields below them. Or: a more radical idea: dispense with the "New Group" popup menu altogether, and merge its functions withe the "gear" button (aren't they closely related anyway?)

- I realize that the "Show reference" button in the List view pulses because it's the default button in that view, but I find this *very* distracting. Is this button needed? Is it enough to be able to double-click an item in the list, or press return when an item is selected -- that would let you get rid of the button.

There will be a new widget in 8.1.1 for Show Reference, and the button is indeed gone. Perhaps you will like the look better. And as far as moving the groups functions to the Gear -- I did that last week. You'll see it in 8.1.1.

- I don't think that the digits in the "Showing xxx of xxx hits" should be in bold face. This throws the typeforms of each of these words slightly out of alignment. I don't think that the bold face adds any information.

I don't feel strongly about this. It was suggested by another user. Oh well. As for alignment -- it is correct according to the pixel measurements.

- Is there no way to resize the scrolling list on the left edge of the Term Lists window? The names of journals and long keywords (I often use as a keyword the title of a book, if the ref is a critical study of that book) are often "scrunched" in the current width of the list, and difficult to read.

No, but you can scrunch the # column (even close it), which gives you another 5 characters or so.

FWIW, Bookends 8.1.1 will be a substantial upgrade (despite the 0.1 designation).

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi tharpold,

Bookends will preserve the font info that EN outputs (in XML). Sometimes I have found that the EN output is incorrect. Of course, Bookends could have made an error, too.

My guess is that these problems are always EN's fault

- I agree with others on this list that a dedicated "Translators" name field is badly needed. As someone who works daily in two languages, I often jump back and forth between translated and untranslated versions of a text, and need to be able to cite both versions easily.

- I believe that there should also be a dedicated "Edition" field -- I'm now using one of my user-specified fields for that -- many of the books that I work with go through multiple editions, and it's important to capture that information.

Hm, books and book chapters do have dedicated Translator and Edition fields. And in Bookends 8.1.1 you'll be able to tell Bookends to treat the Translator field as a name when creating a bibliography.

So... perhaps I'm confused, then: the "Translator" field I see in those cases is in the slot for my "User 3" field. Does that mean that, for books and book chapters, Bookends "takes over" my "User 3" slot and dedicates it to the translator. (And likewise, my "User 2" slot is taken over for "Edition"?

On that subject, I would also recommend that you provide for a translator for journal articles. This is perhaps not so common in some disciplines, but in mine (literary theory), it is very common.

There will be a new widget in 8.1.1 for Show Reference, and the button is indeed gone. Perhaps you will like the look better. And as far as moving the groups functions to the Gear -- I did that last week. You'll see it in 8.1.1.

That sounds great.

- I don't think that the digits in the "Showing xxx of xxx hits" should be in bold face. This throws the typeforms of each of these words slightly out of alignment. I don't think that the bold face adds any information.

I don't feel strongly about this. It was suggested by another user. Oh well. As for alignment -- it is correct according to the pixel measurements.

-- Right -- it's numerically accurate, but I don't think it looks visually accurate: one of those odd effects of bold type.

FWIW, Bookends 8.1.1 will be a substantial upgrade (despite the 0.1 designation).

Good news. I'm sure we all look forward to it!

tharpold wrote:So... perhaps I'm confused, then: the "Translator" field I see in those cases is in the slot for my "User 3" field. Does that mean that, for books and book chapters, Bookends "takes over" my "User 3" slot and dedicates it to the translator. (And likewise, my "User 2" slot is taken over for "Edition"?

On that subject, I would also recommend that you provide for a translator for journal articles. This is perhaps not so common in some disciplines, but in mine (literary theory), it is very common.

In essence, yes, Bookends has usurped User2 and User3 for these purposes. The default for these reference Types is that the Translator and Edition go in those fields. Any format we create using those fields would reflect this. But this is just the default -- you can change these if you want to (Preferences). That's all we did -- set them in Preferences as the default.

Likewise, you can edit Preferences so that User 3 is the Translator for journal articles, too. It's very easy to do.

-- Right -- it's numerically accurate, but I don't think it looks visually accurate: one of those odd effects of bold type.

I'm happy to accept feedback from others, too. It would be trivial to unbold the text if people want that. Anyone else care to comment?


Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:

I don't think that the digits in the "Showing xxx of xxx hits" should be in bold face. This throws the typeforms of each of these words slightly out of alignment. I don't think that the bold face adds any information.

I'm happy to accept feedback from others, too. It would be trivial to unbold the text if people want that. Anyone else care to comment?

I agree with tharpold: there is no reason to use bold face. Moreover, I think there is a bug: in ALL it tells me "Showing 2019 of 2019 references". When I display a group it tells me "showing 124 of 124 references" and not "showing 124 of 2019 references"

tom

Hi tom,

That's not a bug, it's working as intended. The group has 124 references -- that's useful to know, and that's what Bookends tells you -- the number of references in the set you are looking at (whether it be All, Hits, or a group). If you type text in the Live Search box, you may see something like

Showing 12 of 124 references

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:The group has 124 references -- that's useful to know, and that's what Bookends tells you -- the number of references in the set you are looking at (whether it be All, Hits, or a group)

Hi Jon,
this is not logic to me. I would expect the number of references in the set out of the total number of references in my database....I can see how many references are in the group everytime I select a group.

tom

tom,

It is logical to me.

The number of references in the database doesn't change often, and is a pretty useless number. Frankly, there is rarely a need to know this (and you can see it at a glance whenever All is selected or the reference window is in front).

The number of references that are in a subset changes all the time (with each change of group, each search, etc.). It is therefore much more useful to see how many refs are in a subset.

And you do not take into account Live Search. With this you can "drill down" into a subset (e.g. a group, or the Hits, etc.), and now Bookends tells you how many are showing out of the entire group (not the entire database -- unless ALL is selected).

This is logical and useful. And it will not change.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote: The number of references in the database doesn't change often, and is a pretty useless number.

here I do not agree...my database changes daily. it's pretty useless to see "showing 124 of 124 references" when clicking on a group. I can follow you for the life search. Personally, I do not use life searches often; I work rather with smart groups (which are nothing else then stored life searches)

In this case daily is not often. Groups change from minute-to-minute.

The number on the right is the number of references in the current group (All, Hits, or user group). The number on the left is the number of references in that group that are showing. If the Live Search field is empty, both numbers are the same. If text is entered in Live Search, the number on the left reflects the number of references in the group that meet the additional criteria of the Live Search.

Jon
Sonny Software

For what it's worth, I think it's innately useful to display the number of references in the current group and to have the counter refer to that subset, and Bookends behaves exactly as I would expect. It is then possible to further dissect that subset using other search and sorting criteria and to see what proportion of that subset is captured. I don't really see what purpose showing the number for the whole database as opposed to the group would serve in this instance. The feature works as most users would expect and I don't think it needs modification.

I actually sort of like the bold numbers, but I don't think it matters much one way or the other. I'd vote to keep them but wouldn't mind much if the majority of users preferred them plain.

Jonathan

tom wrote:

Jon wrote: The number of references in the database doesn't change often, and is a pretty useless number.

here I do not agree...my database changes daily. it's pretty useless to see "showing 124 of 124 references" when clicking on a group. I can follow you for the life search. Personally, I do not use life searches often; I work rather with smart groups (which are nothing else then stored life searches)

Jon wrote:In essence, yes, Bookends has usurped User2 and User3 for these purposes. The default for these reference Types is that the Translator and Edition go in those fields. Any format we create using those fields would reflect this. But this is just the default -- you can change these if you want to (Preferences). That's all we did -- set them in Preferences as the default.

I think that tharpold is hitting on one of the most difficult aspects of adapting to Bookends: it offers far fewer fields than EndNote or Sente (which recently added the ability to add unlimited number of fields). What does one do with translator, edition, number of volumes (!), original printing date, etc. if one is *already* forced to use User2 and User3? Frankly, the very diverse nature of book information makes a total of 18 fields very limiting.

I realize that more fields have been added to version 8, but are there any plans to incorporate additional fields?

There are actually 19 fields, since Issue is a virtual field (a number in parentheses in the Volume field).

The Notes field can be used to store lots of diverse information, such as original printing date. If you need access to more discrete fields, then Bookends is not going to suit your needs.

I don't know if we'll add more fields in the future or not.

Jon
Sonny Software