March 05, 2005
Bibdesk: a tool for managing BibTeX entries and local copies of papers
I've just downloaded a truly remarkable tool for Mac OS X. I've been looking for a tool like this for ages. It's described rather well on the sourceforge site so I'll begin by quoting that. Later I'll explain exactly which features I've found useful so far.
BibDesk is a graphical BibTeX-bibliography manager for Mac OS X. BibDesk is designed to help organize and use bibliographic databases in BibTeX .bib format. In addition to manual typing, BibDesk lets you drag & drop or cut & paste .bib files into the bibliographic database and automatically opens files downloaded from PubMed. BibDesk also keeps track of electronic copies of literature on your computer and allows for searching your database through several keys.
BibDesk integrates well with TeX for creating citations and bibliographies. This integration includes a Citation search completion service, and drag & drop (cut & paste) support for adding citations to TeX files.
The features which really spring out at me are:
- Graphical interface for writing BibTeX entries
- Search on keywords
- Drag and drop support for adding citations to TeX files
- Keeps track of electronic copies
Here are some more of the funky aspects of this tool though.
- There is an option you can set so that when you fill in the local-URL field in an entry it copies the file to a special directory full of all your other publications
- You can choose how the file is saved based on format strings. For example if you wish to save your files with author, followed by five words of title, followed by year you use the format string
%a1%T5%y. - If the local-URL field is filled in a double-click will open the file in Preview
- Citation keys can automatically be generated from the data in fields. That is once you've filled in enough fields to make your entry unique it will generate a citation key such as
sseefried04OptimisingEDSLS
You can also export to HTML or RSS feeds. I may just do that.