[OS X TeX] Re: bibtex apps

[Lawrence Paulson]

"Denis Chabot" <chabotd at globetrotter.net> wrote:

> has anyone compared bibdesk and Aquatkbibtex? I have tried (briefly)
> bibdesk and found it interesting and quite good, with a few cosmetic
> problems, but being still very unfamiliar with all the bells and
> whistles of bibtex

BibDesk certainly looks nice, being a proper Cocoa app, but it needs 
work before it can be adopted. Its treatment of macros is fatally 
flawed: it expects macros to be defined locally to the .bib file and it 
actually expands them, when many BibTeX users define all their 
abbreviations in a separate .bib file and may have separate versions 
for abbreviated and non-abbreviated versions. It doesn't even cope with 
macros defined in .bst files, like the names of months and major 
journals.

I have just started using JabRef, http://jabref.sourceforge.net/. It is 
a generic Java application, so it looks rather clunky, but it 
understands BibTeX. It read all my old .bib files without complaining 
and without losing information.

Larry Paulson

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