[OS X TeX] Papers or BibDesk?

[Daniel Becker]

Am 30.04.2007 um 11:00 schrieb Bruno Voisin:

> Le 29 avr. 07 à 21:18, Oliver Buerschaper a écrit :
>
>> On the other hand BibDesk is rather stable and for my purposes it  
>> does a good job keeping all my references together. However, I  
>> miss a few things like being able to group papers into  
>> subcategories of first level groups. But still BibDesk has been my  
>> number one choice for quite some time (and will probably remain so  
>> for a little while ;-)

BibDesk is a must.

a) very friendly and clever developers and a list that is comparable  
to the OS X list - following how the feature of searching in external  
(library and co) databases came into BibDesk was really impressive.

b) While the core task is to help you writing your .bib file for  
Bibtex/latex it is so much more. It helps me a lot to keep my  
collection of papers in order. Everything is highly configurable. My  
decision was to have a folder "downloads" next to my .bib file where.  
When I have a new paper I want to add, it is usually only 2 minutes  
from the publishers website to a proper entry in my .bib-database (of  
course you do not really need to type all the info by hand).  When  
that is done, BibDesk has a button I simply need to push to view the  
pdf.  Searching your own database can be done easily and also with  
very sophisticated search strategies.

c) Adding references in to a tex document is also most easy. Start  
typing \cite{Voi and hit a button - Bibdesk will suggest all entries  
with a cite key that contains Voi - choose one, done.

d) Keeping notes together with the papers you read can be done  
already if you do not store a pdf in your papers-folder but a folder.  
For example I have a folder for the paper Barro1990 where the actual  
paper is in and also a few notes. Of course the developers thought  
about something that is by far smarter, have a look at http://skim- 
app.sourceforge.net/.

e) for a task like these Gorodtsov-lists from Bruno voisin: BibDesk  
would not directly do all that for you. But it would help you a lot  
to collect the necessary information such that you have everything  
you need to write those lists relatively quickly (including doi-links  
etc., while this is more a BibTeX/hyperref/LateX-Problem). If it is  
only for your personal use: Searching for all papers by a specific  
author and ordering them by year and having clickable links for doi's  
or urls - very easy-

e) and all this is for free.

f) ....

Papers is not free and my impression is that the GUI might be a bit  
nicer, but in terms of functionality....

Daniel


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