Sonny Software

dear iandol, I would not replace the bookends styles with csl, but I am just suggesting of supporting CSL additionally / optionally on macos. As the fields codes of csl are already assigned to the bookends fields (in bookends ios csl works fine), I assume (but I may be wrong) that it would be feasible to support them also on macos bookends. And if users want to create new styles, they could still use the bookends proprietary format... some users have asked for it here, the csl repository is really useful, as it contains the styles even for not so high-impact journals and there is no need to create own styles (even if it's possible with bookends)

(may I ask what is your workflow and how you use bookends macos with csl?)

What exactly do you want Bookends to "support"? Are you only referring to the plugin for Word? That would still require a lot of work from Jon to support two completely different formatting methods. There are available CSL citeproc engines (citeproc-rs being the most modern, written in rust) but there is a substantial investment of time in learning how to build this into an existing plugin and handle how to switch them etc.

As for my workflow, I write in Scrivener using its comprehensive styles systems and temporary citations from Bookends, then Scrivener automatically compiles my work using markdown to LaTeX / DOCX / ODF / HTML / TXT as necessary, and pandoc has a full citeproc formatting engine. My workflow is linked in my signature.

yes, indeed, for me it was very frustrating to attempt to use pandoc in combination with bookends, despite reading the instructions that ai have found.
I cannot assess how difficult it is to integrate CSL support in bookends. As far as I have understood it is not a high priority for Jon - but that does not mean, that is very complicate from a developer side.

I think iandol's comments were pretty insightful. Please see my comments above, I have nothing more to add.

Jon
Sonny Software

I have asked Keith who develops Scrivener if he can integrate a CSL citeproc engine into Scrivener (here). It would be "easier" for Scrivener to add CSL support as it already has a comprehensive formatting engine, but it is still a huge undertaking for a single developer who must assign priorities to organise her or his time. Scrivener would need to bridge to a different language or integrate a binary and handle serialisation and deserialisation across document formats, i.e. it is non-trivial.

Perhaps one of the Zotero plugins could do the job?

Yes, Pandoc does require some work to set up and integrate. If you are not so comfortable with the command line or only use Word it isn't easy. Scrivener does help here as it allows you to write in a comfortable GUI, while allowing GUI automation of the the more difficult part of converting to DOCX / LaTeX or whatever format you need...

bookends and pandoc:
dear iandol, maybe (if you have time) you can record a screencast video how to stetup pandoc with bookends and word? that would be fantastic.

bookends and csl:
Jon, please regard my suggestion of (optionally) supporting CSL in bookends as a feature suggestion/request. I understand that it may have low priority to you, and/or that there are some issues with CSL. But as it works already quite smoothly on ios, I have the hope, that you might change your mind sometimes in the future. I appreciate your work, I accept your standpoint, and I understand, that you can not fulfill all user requests.

Sorry, but I only grudgingly use Word, if at all, as a final tweak. The DOCX is already fully formatted, including figures / equations / table / academic metadata / bibliography before Word is ever opened. See an example fully-formatted DOCX here: https://github.com/iandol/scrivomatic/r ... kflow.docx

To use Pandoc, you need to write in markdown, or use an editor that can output markdown. If you are only writing in Word, then you will need to look for the solutions for Zotero + BetterBibTeX + Word, with the tweak that you don't need to use Zotero to make the BibTeX, but get Bookends to do that bit. I've never tested this so your mileage may vary.