Generating an abbreviations table

[lyndondrake]

Hi,

Following on from viewtopic.php?t=6031, I'm also trying to generate an abbreviations table for the front matter of the book or journal article. It was suggested to me on the DEVONThink forum that this could be done in Bookends:

You can create this list automatically via Biblio > Bibliography > Bibliography Window

I can't see a way to do this. My guess is that I could generate a term list for the journal glossary, but there are a couple of things I need in order to produce an abbreviations list for a book or article:

• I'd need it to be just for the cited texts in the book/article, and it's not obvious to me how I can generate that from the Bibliography window.
• In the annoying style guide (SBL) the abbreviations list needs to pull in formatted citations for certain types of texts, rather than just presenting the unabbreviated form found in the abbreviations list. That kind of optionality seems to me like a whole additional use of a citation format, which is of course exactly how biblatex-sbl achieves the output.
• There are some text styling rules which I think would be difficult to encode in a Bookends term list, in particular some item types need to be italicised in the abbreviation list while others are in normal roman/upright font.

Anyway, because it's something I need often, if there is a way to do it in Bookends I'd be happy, but also no problem if it can't be done.

Best,
Lyndon

[Jon]

Again, in as few words as possible, show me what this would look like in Word. I'm guessing it can't be done in Bookends, but I won't know for sure until I see it.

FYI, one tip I can give you is that after a scan the references you cited are in the Hits List, so you can save them to a new group, export them, do Global Change operations on them, etc.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Philologist]

I'm also trying to generate an abbreviations table for the front matter of the book or journal article. It was suggested to me on the DEVONThink forum that this could be done in Bookends

This is what I had in mind when I said it's possible to do this in Bookends. You need to create two new types and start using two new custom fields. Don't have Live Bibliography enabled. After scanning your document in Mellel, you'll see something like this:

0.png (29.39 KiB) Viewed 6852 times

1. Create two new Types: Abbreviation and Abbreviation italics (the latter is for abbreviations which – according to your Style guide – are supposed to be in italics; I'm referring to the screenshot you posted in the DEVONthink forum on August 1, 2023)

1.png (50.9 KiB) Viewed 6878 times

2. Use custom fields to create two new fields; call them, for example, Abbr and Abbreviation.

2.png (23.14 KiB) Viewed 6878 times

3. When you enter an abbreviation (with the corresponding full title following), enter the abbreviation in the field Abbr, and the full title in the field Abbreviation.

[To be continued]

[Philologist]

—PART TWO—


4. In the Formatting Manager enter this:

3.png (25.06 KiB) Viewed 6877 times

Between the two fields is a tab.

5. Leave all fields in the Citation Options empty.

6. Make sure you choose the right Type: "Abbreviation" for normal abbreviations, and "Abbreviation italic" for those abbreviations you want Bookends to output in italic.
7. Create a Smart Group (based on a meaningful keyword). Now you have direct access to all your abbreviated entries. You can select them all and execute the menu command "Copy Citation". You'll then see something like this in Mellel

6.png (24.6 KiB) Viewed 6877 times

8. Scan the document, and voila, you'll get this:

7.png (23.96 KiB) Viewed 6877 times

[To be continued]

[Philologist]

—PART THREE—


9. Cut and paste it where you want:

8.png (29.39 KiB) Viewed 6853 times

[Jon]

That's clever.

Jon
Sonny Software

[lyndondrake]

Again, in as few words as possible, show me what this would look like in Word. I'm guessing it can't be done in Bookends, but I won't know for sure until I see it.

Below is the example from my thesis. Generating the abbreviations list itself is helpful. The challenge from the SBL Style Guide is that certain types of references are supposed to not display the abbreviation and its long form, but the abbreviation and a short bibliography-style citation. An example in the screenshot below is COS = The Context of Scripture.

Note that the Abbreviations table generated by BibLaTeX includes only those abbreviations which it has used in the thesis document, and includes all those abbreviations. The fact that this happens automatically is extremely useful, as it is not a table of all possible abbreviations (which in the style guide is many pages long), and also guarantees that any abbreviation used in the entire thesis does appear in the table at the front of the book. Basically it takes a tedious and error-prone manual task and automates it.

Screenshot 2023-08-05 at 3.25.25 PM.png (148.49 KiB) Viewed 6781 times

[lyndondrake]

—PART TWO—
7. Create a Smart Group (based on a meaningful keyword). Now you have direct access to all your abbreviated entries. You can select them all and execute the menu command "Copy Citation". You'll then see something like this in Mellel

I think this is the point of difference between what I can achieve with BibLaTeX and with Bookends, because with BibLaTeX the index automatically includes all abbreviations used in all my citations across the whole thesis/book, and only those abbreviations.

What I can see with this technique, though, is that I could add a third type for e.g. Context of Scripture, lexicons, and so forth, and expand out the extra bibliographic citation info for that third type within the table.

Having done all that, I would only need a way to associate the new entries with the cited works in the document.

@Jon, given the existence of the Term Lists and Journal Glossaries, I wonder if it would be possible to consider adding to Bookends' AppleScript dictionary a command to request the set of abbreviations used by the most recent scan? Then, after scanning a document, it would be possible for another app to grab that and build a table of abbreviations. If it was additionally possible to ask for a formatted table, using some similar mechanism to what @Philologist has described, that would be even better.

[Jon]

After a scan the cited references are all hits. You are then free to do with them whatever you like with an AppleScript. For example, you could use a special format that just output User20 (where the abbreviation might be stored) and/or the journal field. In the AS you could sort them, remove duplicates, and send the results to a file.

Jon
Sonny Software

[lyndondrake]

After a scan the cited references are all hits. You are then free to do with them whatever you like with an AppleScript. For example, you could use a special format that just output User20 (where the abbreviation might be stored) and/or the journal field. In the AS you could sort them, remove duplicates, and send the results to a file.

Thanks, that's a great suggestion. It could work well for NWP via scripting, although for Mellel I'd need the app itself to change.

[Jon]

I was suggesting using an AppleScript after doing a scan, independently of the word processor. But if NWP has a solution via macros that would be fine.

Jon
Sonny Software