[OS X TeX] Papers or BibDesk?

[Adam M. Goldstein]

On Apr 27, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Robert H. Sloan wrote:

> 	I'm interested in moving to BibDesk from plain old emacs (well,  
> these days Aquamacs) and BibTeX, but am finding it hard to get a  
> good description of what extra features are available to me.
>
> 	I'm an old timer, who started using emacs plus BibTeX in 1985, and  
> have a couple of very big .bib files I use. Still, like all other  
> researchers these days, I sure do have a hard drive full of papers  
> that I have read/mean to read/might read, and I often want to cite  
> them.
>
> 	Is there a good introduction out there for the experienced BibTeX  
> + emacs type?

< snip >

I don't know that there's a good introduction for BibDesk. You can  
look at the help file online, which gives some task-oriented  
explanations for things you are likely to use BD for:

http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/manual/

As an emacs user, here are some of the ways I use BD.

-Create BibTeX records in BD. Lots of helpful autocompletion;  
automatically generate cite keys according to custom pattern; LaTeX  
preview of the entry; easy entry of keywords and custom fields for  
organizing records and papers, including boolean fields that appear  
as check boxes; three-valued fields; and "rating" field that allows  
ranking of records on a scale of 1 to 5.

- Change many, many records at once by various drag and drop  
operations, for instance, adding a key word to a large set of records  
or correcting the spelling of an author's name.

-File new PDF's in my "papers" folder by dragging them to the record,  
where they are filed in a file structure automatically generated by  
BD according to a custom scheme.

- Create citations while using emacs by dragging "\cite" commands  
from BD to the emacs window; or else sometimes I use RefTeX for this.

- Cite many references at once by selecting their records all at once  
and dragging their "\cite" commands from BD; I don't know how I would  
use RT for this.

- Create groups in BD to display records for papers added today;  
added today and yesterday.

- Index papers by many keys: author/editor; key word; custom groups  
created on the fly.

- Add citations from the library of congress, Amazon, entrez pubmed,  
or (almost) any library with Z39.50 access, which can be searched  
from directly within BD.

- Super-convenient means of acquiring citations that can't be  
directly imported with "add publications from clipboard" feature.

- search the papers library with a pretty sophisticated search engine  
that supports wildcard characters and boolean searching (based around  
Apple's Searchkit).
--
Dr. Adam M. Goldstein
amgoldstein <at> mac <dot> com
http://homepage.mac.com/amgoldstein




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