How should Papers export/import BibTeX libraries?
As a frequent paper author and reviewer, I take my BibTeX quite seriously. Papers 2.0 is the first version that is a good enough candidate for exporting bibtex. I've been sending boatloads of suggestions to the Papers developers in an effort to improve it. They asked that we discuss bibtex export needs here to try to get a consensus. I haven't dealt with bibtex import, but if that's relevant, let's discuss it here too.
Here's some issues that I definitely urge the developers to fix:
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Titles are wrapped in {{}}. They need to be wrapped in only one {}. It would be desirable if it was possible to mark characters as always capitalized, so they could get wrapped in their own {}. Example:
Current: title = {{Using GPUs to Improve Multigrid Solver Performance on a Cluster}},
Should be: title = {Using {GPU}s to Improve Multigrid Solver Performance on a Cluster},
"publisher" is also wrapped in {{}}, which is totally unnecessary since it's ignored anywhere except "title".
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Months should always be three-letter abbreviations not wrapped in anything, since those abbreviations are built into bibtex and then translate properly to other languages if necessary (and allow the bib style to select if it wants Sept., September, 9, etc.).
Current: month = {sep},
Should be: month = sep,
Ideally, Papers should also support month/month (month = mar # "\slash " # apr) and day-month (month = "2~" # dec).
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@incollection has multiple issues: no way to mark the book title (what exports as "publisher" is what I would expect to be "booktitle"); no way to mark the chapter number; no way to mark the book volume number.
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Putting parentheses in an author name is broken. Poor "Deng, Yangdong (Steve)" gets corrected to "{Deng, Yangdong {Steve}" (note the braces, and the lack of a closing brace).
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url is currently broken, since all fields have to be either numbers, defined abbreviations, wrapped in {}, or wrapped in "", and since it's wrapped in \url{} not {\url{}}, it breaks bibtex. See below for more on this though (what is the right thing to do).
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Any time two initials are exported, they need to be separated. "Bethel, EW" means poor Wes's first name is "EW", which it's not. "Bethel, E.W." is also not right - separate the E. and W. with a space.
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Support both @phdthesis and @mastersthesis.
Things I'd like:
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In general, importing from ACM and IEEE into bibtex loses both first names (instead replacing them with initials) and periods after initials.
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Customizable citation formats (my field uses Lastname:YYYY:ABC, where ABC are the first three letters in the first three words in the title)
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Fixing ACM and IEEE exports (capitalization in venue titles, weird formatting of venue titles, making the exported title match the capitalization of the title on the paper, etc.)
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If the URL is actually a DOI, put that in the "doi" field instead. Right now Papers is (correctly) coding these as just the right half of the DOI (no http://, no dx.doi.org).
Things I'm not sure about:
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Formatting of urls. Right now the export uses url = \url{http://...}. I know that won't work because everything has to be wrapped in a {} or a "", so "\url{http://...}" would make more sense. My feeling is that we should NOT be asking for \url{} though, instead just citing the URL without wrapping it, since most bib styles that use the url field will wrap it themselves. But this is a good topic for discussion.
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Formatting of local_url. Right now these have %s in the titles, which appears to work correctly on my latex installation, which is good. Nice to get feedback on others' setups though. My current thought is that url should be formatted exactly as local_url is now.
There are other things that will surely bug me once I actually get started using this export to write papers. Anyway, hoping that we can get some good discussion going on what the right thing to do is so we can give guidance to the Papers developers.
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152 Posted by Elmar on 18 Nov, 2012 06:54 AM
I wish some auto-export feature would exist so every time I add new papers to Papers I do not need to export it manually to BibTex.
153 Posted by David Knight on 20 Nov, 2012 09:31 PM
I agree with Elmar's suggestion: auto-export of a BibTeX library would be a killer feature for me.
154 Posted by Michael Aye on 22 Nov, 2012 05:40 AM
The DOI field is not being exported to Bibtex in 2.4.1, was it happening in earlier versions?
155 Posted by Pierre on 03 Dec, 2012 11:10 AM
I am facing problems with the bibtex exportation of "edited collections" (that is a book which is a collection of chapters written by different authors but edited by the same few people). The entry of such a book has an empty author field and a nonempty editor field. The editor field in Papers is not exported in the editor filed in the bibtex file. Is it intentional or is it a bug?
In addition, the cite key of such a book is "Anonymous:YYYYaz". Shouldn't Papers use the name of the first editor to build the cite key?
156 Posted by bjf on 06 Dec, 2012 05:59 PM
I also note that DOI is not exported and we need it to be in the BibTex record!
157 Posted by bjf on 12 Dec, 2012 10:40 AM
Same with ISBN.
158 Posted by Edvin on 19 Dec, 2012 10:21 AM
I hope I am not repeating earlier comments, but I have one thing on my mind for reference import. Bib is my concern, but the feature would be more general.
When I collaborate with others on a manuscript, they will from time to time add references to the bib-file, which I might not have in my Papers archive. To keep citekeys concistent and to possibly obtain a PDF for the paper I would like to import these references from the bib file, resolve any citekey conflicts and have them added to my Papers archive. Currently, if I try to simply import the entire bib-file Papers will make duplicate entries of all the Papers I already have.
159 Posted by CGD on 22 Dec, 2012 02:05 PM
This may have been pointed out, but when I use the formatting commands built into papers to put an exponent into the title, that exponent isn't converted properly into latex when I export to a .bib file. What should be written in the .bib file as $10{10}$ is just 10-10. So I have to go into the .bib file and hunt down the error. As noted earlier, if I just put the $10{10}$ directly into the title it ends up escaped and printed at the end with the $'s. Is there a work-around, or a planned fix?
160 Posted by bh on 07 Jan, 2013 08:11 PM
Consider this another vote for arxiv eprint support in papers2 and bibtex exports. A growing number of my references are from arxiv and while there is very nice bibtex handling for arxiv eprints, there doesn't seem to be any way to access those in papers.
161 Posted by Don on 10 Jan, 2013 11:09 AM
If we can't have the bbl generated from the citations in a document, how about using the collections?
Linking a collection to a bbl would regenerate that bbl any time the contents changed.
You could also add an 'add to collection X' checkbox to the MM popup that would generate the collection as you cite things.
162 Posted by yo yo on 11 Jan, 2013 10:16 PM
Please, Please let me choose how citekeys are generated!
For example, I personally use Author:Year, Author:Yeara, Author:Yearb, etc. It doesn't make sense to use random letters at all because most people won't remember them when they are typing, and will have to keep on looking them up each time they are used!
Also, look at JabRef for other ideas...I'll probably stick with JabRef until the citekey issue is fixed in Papers.
163 Posted by Gaspard P on 24 Jan, 2013 04:03 PM
Hello,
These threads are very technical, although very interesting.
I would find it very interesting if someone could offer an example of a good workflow for using Papers2 with a Latex editor, TexShop for example.
I understand that it is possible to use Magic citation to insert Bibtex cite key in Latex. But how do you generate the .bib bibtex file for example? Do you need to make a collection with the paper that you cite? And export it later? Or…?
This is what I find most confusing so far.
Thanks
164 Posted by Carl Witt on 31 Jan, 2013 06:05 PM
Yes, please, add eprint support to the bibtex export.
Biblatex offers beautiful, concise and practical formatting for these entries.
165 Posted by ryan on 01 Feb, 2013 06:45 PM
@Gaspard: I don't use the magic manuscripts becuase I find it clunky with bibtex. Instead I set up a "collection" for each paper, drag and drop what I want to cite into the collection, then export the collection as a bibtex file.
It's not perfect, but it works.
One issue that still comes up is how to export articles that have url's (like working papers on the web etc...) into bibtex from Papers. Anyone have ideas?
166 Posted by Denis on 06 Feb, 2013 09:35 AM
an automatic .bib generator was many times mentioned above.
+10000000 Please, give us this feature.
I would also like to be able to modify the automatic cite-keys format.
A must have option.
167 Posted by Denis on 06 Feb, 2013 09:40 AM
p/s/ the similar feature was mentioned as early as March 31 2011 (first page of the thread), that is almost 2 years ago. Please, listen to your customers
168 Posted by Denis on 06 Feb, 2013 10:14 AM
+1 for live-update of bibtex export: 78.2 114 120 125 126 127 131 139
+1 to generation of a bibtex file based on citation used in a current file being edited 78.3 107 108 144
It is clear to me from the number of times these features were mentioned since last two years, that those are highly demanded and hopefully will finally make it to a release version.
Thanks in advance
169 Posted by steja on 09 Mar, 2013 12:08 AM
Add me to the list of people desperate for working Bibtex output from Papers...
Meanwhile, here's a short *nix shell script I just hacked together to fix the problem with the initials (at least most of them, sort of). YMMV.
170 Posted by ghenbcubp on 12 Mar, 2013 01:05 PM
way ? multiple ? part ? is ? these
171 Posted by Johannes B on 16 Mar, 2013 07:22 PM
Bibtex and standards:
In Papers2 I can enter a number for the standard, but it is not included in the Latex output.
Which makes the whole thing kind of useless.
172 Posted by Johannes B on 16 Mar, 2013 07:27 PM
Suggestion for quick improvements:
My impression is that the latex export has not been improved substantially since the first post on this thread, which was 2011. I just had a look at the Bibtex file which was exported by the last version of Papers 2 (2.4.9), and many of the issues that are mentioned in the post are still there.
If you could include some form of editable mapper from Paper2 entries to Bibtex entries, we uses could do this by ourselves. This approach should lead to quick results and enable individual customizations if needed.
173 Posted by Aldaron on 23 Mar, 2013 01:47 PM
Wow, this is not a complete disaster! I'm going to have to get rid of Papers and move to a better tool: papers no longer imports urls from .bib files.
174 Posted by Ray on 25 Mar, 2013 09:10 PM
Seconding the comment above: ability to define rules for citekey generation on export to BibTex format are needed. In your blog post on your reasoning used to design your universal citekeys, I think you left out an essential attribute:
Able to be generated by a person while writing.
This key to my workflow: I don't use papers while I'm writing, and as much as I like it for organizing papers I don't want it to be part of my writing process at this level. When I write, I want to be able to insert the cite-key in a latex document from memory, which means that the universal-citekey you've defined aren't useful.
I typically use "First author last name + first letter of the last name of other authors + two digit year", with an extra letter corresponding to the month if there are collisions. I'm not asking for you to implement this exactly - it works for me but obviously won't work for everyone - but give us a general way to define what we want the citekey to be on export and I'm happy to do some hacking of styelsheets, etc...
175 Posted by stevebegin on 27 Mar, 2013 07:35 PM
Someone mentioned using collections in conjunction with MM and I think that it would be a great idea while we wait for MM to properly generate a bib file.
Right now I use MM to insert citation into my Latex file but what kind of defeats the purpose of MM is that I then have to find the paper in Papers to add it to a collection which I then use to export to a .bib file.
It seems to me that, when using MM to insert a citation, it would be simple to create collection (with the name of the latex file?) and then add the paper to that collection automatically.
What do you guys think?
176 Posted by Joao Abrao on 09 Apr, 2013 01:22 PM
I have two computers, one at home and another in my office.
How can I have the same content in both computers?
Exporting bibitex to dropbox, I didn't have the collections organized?
What should I have to do?
Please, anyone could help me?