Sonny Software

is it possible that quotes and punctuation added to the ignore words list do not work?

I have set "Alphabetize references: Author,Title" in the "Bib & Document options"-tab of my format. also I checked both checkboxes for "use ignore list for".

In "BE > Prefs > Scan & Bibliography" I have added the three lines
„
…
„…

Now I have to titles of the same author, one starting with an "A" and the other starting with "„… in" which I would expect to be sorted as if it starts with an "i" with the current settings. But BE sorts it as frist entry.

This won't work, because to be "ignored" it must be a word (i.e. end with a space or hyphen).

I strongly advise you to NOT have quotes around your titles in the database. This is something Bookends will add for you when formatting, if you want. Do not hard-code it in your references.

Jon
Sonny Software

thanks for your reply.

I don't want titles within quotes normally. But in this case, the quotes are part of the title (it is a citation, a sentence spoken by the person, who is item of this biography). Therefor I don't see another possibility to insert this title correctly.

Is there any argument speaking against improving the ignore list in this direction? I can't see any. Quite the contrary I would say if there are titles like that, this is an argument for implementing this feature to BE.

This kind of titles are not very often, but often enough in history, social anthropology and in biographies. (Two out of 14 Titles in one document I have written start with quotes.)

Well, you could create a new Type for this (Quoted Title or something) and add it to the format.

It might be possible to have punctuation at the beginning of a title ignored, but in that case the word after it would not be, even if it were in the list (it would no longer be the first "word").

Have you tried adding the specific examples you have problems with to the ignore list: e.g.

"I

or

"The

This might work.

Jon
Sonny Software

I tried "„…" as well as "„… " (the text wihin the straight quotes: first typographical quote follow by three dots (as one letter), second is the same with an additional blank space.

If I add the first word to test it, which is "in" in this case (and which I don't want to be ignored btw) this also has no effect neither in the bibliography window nor if I save the biblography to a file.

btw: is it correct with normal words, that they have not to be followed by a blank space in the ignore list (only the word have to be listed with nothing more)?

Right. The word in the list should NOT be followed by a space. Bookends will add it when doing the comparisons.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:Well, you could create a new Type for this (Quoted Title or something) and add it to the format.

I would prefer the solution that punctuation could be added int he ignore list.

Jon wrote:It might be possible to have punctuation at the beginning of a title ignored, but in that case the word after it would not be, even if it were in the list (it would no longer be the first "word").

I have an idea: wouldn't it be very easy if you would allow every symbol and letter in the ignore list and also more than one word? then every user could decide if he/she makes a long complicated ignore list (what I would prefer) or a Quoted Type like you suggested. for me this sounds to be the best solution for this problem.

I'll think of something.

Jon
Sonny Software

In the next beta you can specify that an opening quote mark be ignored in a Title sort. Also that something like "The ... be ignored. It doesn't work for smart quotes, but hopefully will at some point when the db engine is updated.

Jon
Sonny software

Jon, I have to say: you are great.

While the two partners Mellel and Bookends are a very powerful pair but the Mellel-GUI is much easier to use than the real complicated BE (imho). But your great support and fastest possible reaction to user suggestions balances this out again.

best regards, Reiner