[OS X TeX] Bibliography Citations (was: New TeXShop macro: "Insert reference")

[Will Robertson]

On 24 Aug 2004, at 5:22 PM, Simon Spiegel wrote:
> Personally, I never use macros, I'm not even what they're good for. ;)

Well, they're not the cat's pyjamas or anything, but I hate to lose out 
on the small amount of flexibility they allow. Basically, I define my 
journal references
as strings so that I can swap in abbreviated forms whenever necessary, 
and similarly for the names of the months. One .bib file will contain

@string{IEEETransMag = {IEEE Transactions on Magnetics}}
@string{RevSciInstr = {Review of Scientific Instruments}}
...

for when I have journal names in full, and a different file has the 
abbreviated versions:

@string{IEEETransMag = {IEEE Trans. Mag.}}
@string{RevSciInstr = {Rev. Sci. Instr.}}
...

Using BibDesk, this wouldn't work, since the first time I import the 
bib file, it will replace all string calls by their literals, 
precluding the possibility of later changing them. A fancy 
search/replace would perform the same job, though.

> What I'd love to see instead (and what I consider that most important 
> not yet implemented feature) is z39.50 support. But there you go: 
> different people have different priorities. And since I'm not a 
> programmer I try to help BibDesk everywhere else I can by testing, 
> reporting bugs and writing little AppleScripts.

You're right, I was overly harsh.
For now though I'll stick to writing little Applescripts for TeXShop 
instead. (And iTeXMac as well, I suppose.)

Will

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