[OS X TeX] BibDesk produces invalid bib file

[Jan Hegewald]

On 12.04.2011, at 15:03, Paulo Ferreira wrote:

> 
> On 2011/04/12, at 09:37, Jan Hegewald wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> I am a happy user of BibDesk. Sometimes it can not open the previously saved .bib files, i.e. it shows a dialog with "Unable to parse string as BibTeX ...". I use only BibDesk to edit my bin files. I guess this has to do with the keys I use. For online references, I like to use the full URL as key, e.g. http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/. Some URLs contain characters liek = or ? and my guess is that BibDesk is choking on those.
> 
> Yes. 
> The range of supported chars on a key is limited. 

The characters I use do work fine with biblatex and latex. Even within BibDesk, as long as I never close the document.

> 
>> I usually do not close my bib file for several weeks, so when this error occurs, there are often lots of new entries, which makes it harder to track all the "erroneous" ones.
> 
> You can use the Menu  "Window"->"Errors" to check for wrong keys. 

The errors do not show up there. Only if I close and re-open the file do they show as "syntax error".

> 
>> Can you see if you can reproduce this error, so I can file a bug report.
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> -- Jan
> 
> 
> It's not a bug. It is a feature!  

I do not agree. If a programme can not open its own files, I would call this a bug.


Cheers,
-- Jan