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BibCompanion Preferences |
BibCompanion preferences ([BibCompanion - Preferences] menu) consists of three parts, General Settings, Bib Types Settings and Macros Settings. It also has 4 buttons below, 2 of them (<OK> and <Cancel>) are apparent, (?) opens this help, and <Revert to Defaults> revert all settings (not only shown tab) to the factory settings.
The first tab in the preference dialog is a general setting as shown below.
Default encoding and line ending are the encoding and line ending code used when a bib data file does not have an encoding information (normally, these defaults are used when you create a new database or open a database for the first time). Once you saved a database using BibCompanion, it saves the encoding and line ending information in the data file at the first @COMMENT block. You should NOT edit or remove the first @COMMENT block manually.
In most cases, you should choose a correct encoding that is supported by BibTeX. If you are not sure which encoding should be used, choose one as <your language (Mac OS)> for encoding, <LF (Unix)> for line ending. You can change the encoding and line ending for each database via database property settings.
By default, unicode and classic MacOS encodings for each languages are listed in the text encoding menu. If you want to choose another one, choose <Edit Encoding Menu...> and the following window is appeared.
Checked encodings are listed ones. Check what you want to show in the menu. If you click <Check all> or <Uncheck all> button, all items are checked/unchecked. If you enter a string, i.g. ‘korean’, in the lower right field and press <Check items contain:> button, items contain the string (‘Korean (EUC)’ etc.) are checked. You should check at least one encoding.
Here you can choose what action will be selected when you copy or drag bib items in the item list view to other application. Despite of the choice here, you can select any action directly from [Edit] menu.
Refer to Copying Bib Item Lists for more information.
If this is checked, ‘\’ (backslash) characters in the pasteboard are converted into ‘¥’ (yen currency mark) characters when you paste a string to other applications. This option is mainly for Japanese users, because these characters are identical in the Shift-JIS encoding which is the most common encoding for Japanese.
By default, when you copy bib items as a HTML or RTF text list, the list is indexed by serial number as 1, 2, ... If this is checked, bib keys are used instead of numbers.
Refer to Copy as a Bib Item List for more information.
These checkboxes select whether smart paste functions are turned on or off. These functions are very useful when you copy and paste informations from web sites or pdf files.
If smart paste on ‘author/editor’ is checked, a string pasted on ‘author’ or ‘editor’ field is automatically converted into BibTeX author format. For example, if a string as
“F. J. Manjón*,1, S. Jandl and G. Riou2”
is pasted, it is converted as
“F. J. Manj{\'o}n and S. Jandl and G. Riou”
As well as asterisks, numbers and daggers are also stripped and commas are changed to “and”s. When you paste to append other names, connecting “and” is automatically added.
If smart paste on ‘title/booktitle’ is checked, a string pasted on ‘title’ or ‘booktitle’ field is automatically converted into BibTeX title format. For example, if a string as
“RHEED studies on β-Ga2O3(100) 2×1 surface”
is pasted, it is converted as
“{RHEED} Studies on $\beta$-{Ga}$_2${O}$_3$(100) 2$\times$1 Surface”
As shown in the above example, each word is capitalized except for prepositions/conjunctions, all capital words, and proper nouns are surrounded by braces. In addition, chemical formulas and several special math characters are also converted into TeX expressions. It can treat fairly complex chemical formulas as follows.
A chemical formula should consist of chemical elements (H to Lr and D), numbers, plus/minus sign, and lowercase letters of x, y, z, w, n, m. A chemical formula can be nested by parenthesis, brackets and braces, however, nesting with same type of parens such as “(Pb(Zr3Ti))2” is not permitted.
A letter with diacritical mark such as ‘ü’ is converted to TeX expression ‘{\"u}’. Special letters for TeX (#, % etc.) and math character (α, ×, √ etc.) are also converted into TeX expressions. If you paste a string with a backslash letter (\) or a TeX super- and sub-script command, smart paste does not work. In addition, you need to paste at least 5 additional letters to use smart paste. Overwriting paste may not invoke this function.
Illegal characters (such as null character codes, non-breaking spaces etc.), that are often included when you copy a string from a pdf file, are also stripped automatically despite of this setting.
Smart title paste explained above decide whether a word is conjunction or not by its length. If the word length is less than 4 it is assumed to be a conjunction (or a preposition), otherwise it is assumed to be a normal word. However, there are many exceptions such as ‘from’ (long conjunction), ‘gap’ (short noun) etc. In addition to proper nouns, you can edit a list of (long) conjunctions, (short) words using this button.
When you click this button, the sheet shown below is appeared.
Top most popup menu chooses a category to edit. You can append a new word at the end of the list (double click the blank field at the bottom). To edit an existing word, double click the word and enter new word. If a word you entered is already exists in the list, the word is colored red and can not be fixed. If you entered a blank string for a field, the field will be removed. Words are alphabetically sorted when this sheet is opened again.
You can export current list of words as a text file by pressing <Export to Text> button. The exported text file is saved in [Western (MacOS Roman)] encoding.
<Import from Text> button imports a list of words in a text file you choose. The text file should be save in [Western (MacOS Roman)] encoding and words should be separated by spaces, tabs, commas or new-line codes. Words already in the list are ignored.
You can choose one of three (Regular/Small/Mini) font sizes for detail information fields (Basic Info, Optional Info and Link tabs). Annotation and raw field uses regular sized font despite of this choice.
This checkbox selects an auto-save action. If this is checked, BibCompanion checks if opened databases were changed or not in every n minutes (n is defined in the following field), and saves unsaved ones automatically.
This field specifies how many backups will be made when a database is saved. For example, if this number is set to 2, the oldest database is saved as <database.bib.2>, the second oldest one is saved as <database.bib.1> and the current database is saved as <database.bib>. The next time you save the database, the oldest one is actually removed and replaced by the second oldest, and so on.
With this function, it is possible to revert to a previous state when some trouble happened (database was broken, database can not be used by BibTeX etc.). To use a backup, remove a numbered extension in the file name.
If you set a number as zero, no backup file is made. In this case, existing backup files are not removed automatically.
Here you can customize how to generate a bibkey when you press “Generate Bibkey” button in the input support panel or select “Generate Bibkeys” command in “Edit” menu.
The rule consists of several bracketed ([....]) blocks, each of them contains at most one field definition (surrounded by ‘<’ and ‘>’). A field definition can contain plural fields separated by ‘/’ (slash).
If a bracketed block contains a field definition, the field definition is replaced by the field contents of corresponding bib item (if plural fields are defined, a leading field is prior to a followed one). Letters in brackets but outside a field definition is appeared as you type. If the corresponding field does not exist in the item, whole bracketed string is ignored. If a bracketed block does not contain a field definition, it always appears. Any letters outside brackets will be ignored.
If any of ‘/’ (slash), ‘|’ (vertical bar) or ‘_’ (underscore) is followed just after an opening bracket (‘[’), those letters should be escaped by ‘\’ (backslash), i.g., if you want to get a string like “Nakahara_2000”, the rule should be “[<fam>][\_<year>]”. Otherwise, “[<fam>][_<year>]” may get “Nakahara2000”.
In addition to the normal field names, you can use the following special field names.
By default, generated key has a format lile “<fam><giv>:<journal><volume>:<year>”.
Contents of checked fields are appeared in the items list in the main window. You can also change a column titles, alignment of contents and bib field names for columns. However, you can not change titles and alignments for ‘Mark’ and ‘Attachments’, and also, changing of field names for ‘Mark’, ‘Attachments’, ‘BibType’, ‘BibKey’ and ‘Modified’ are not permitted. Checkbox for ‘BibKey’ should be always ON.
Plural field names should be separated by commas and a leading one is prior to a followed one.
You can not append a new column, use unused column instead.
Column order in the list is not defined here, but, you can drag a column header of the items list in the main window to change the order. In addition, you can change column width by dragging a border of a column header.
You can choose one of three choices “Family, Given”, “Given Family” or “Family name only” for name format in the bib item list. For names in Japanese, both of the first 2 choices result in the same expression as “Family Given”.
In the second tab, you can customize setting for each bib types as ‘ARTICLE’, ‘BOOK’ etc. You can use undefined types, however, it is recommended to define all types here for your convenience.
Choose a bib type to edit here. The definition [~~ untitled ~~] is used when undefined bib type is assigned for a bib item. This definition can not be removed.
The left and right parts correspond to ‘Basic Info’ and ‘Optional Info’ in the detail information panel. Each field is a field name of the corresponding field in the panel. A checked field is treated as a required field, otherwise it is treated as an optional field. In the detail info panel, a required field name is shown in black, an optional one is shown in blue. Required fields are NOT really required to enter something. It is just a guide to users.
‘bibkey’, ‘bibtype’ and ‘database’ fields can not be changed.
Here are definitions how it should be formatted when user requires to make a list of bib items. Each bib type should have at least one definition. You can prepare more than one definition, however, only the top most definition is used. You can change the order of the definitions by drag&drop definition rows.
Each definition consists of several bracketed blocks ([...]), which has at most one field definition surrounded by ‘<’ and ‘>’. A field definition can contain plural fields separated by ‘/’ (slash).
If a bracketed block contains a field definition, the field definition is replaced by the field contents of corresponding bib item (if plural fields are defined, a leading field is prior to a followed one). Letters in brackets but outside a field definition is appeared as you type. If the corresponding field does not exist in the item, whole bracketed string is ignored. If a bracketed block does not contain a field definition, it always appears. Any letters outside brackets will be ignored.
If any of ‘/’ (slash), ‘|’ (vertical bar) or ‘_’ (underscore) is followed just after an opening bracket (‘[’), those letters are interpreted as block format definitions of italic, bold and underline respectively. If you want to use these letters as is, those should be escaped by ‘\’ (backslash). For example, [<author>, ][/<title>] gets a string as “T.A. Edison, Title of the paper”, [<author>][\/<title>] gets as “T.A. Edison/Title of the paper”.
In addition to the normal field names, you can use the following special field names.
If you press <Remove Selected Type> button, currently selected bib type is removed. To add a new type, press <Add New Type> button and enter a new type name.
The third tab in the preference dialog is general (independent of a database) macro setting as shown below. In general, those macros should be defined in a BibTeX style file (plain.bst, abbrv.bst etc.) you use to compile references. User defined macros should be defined in the database macros.
By default, 31 standard macro definitions are registered.
The list consists of two columns, one is a macro name and another is a macro data. The macro name is a name of macro and the macro data is an expanded expression of the corresponding macro.
You can edit an existing macro by double clicking on the item. If you double click on the last blank row, you can add a new macro definition. In addition, pressing <Insert New Macro> button can create a new macro just after a selected row.
Macro name should starts with alphabet and should not contain any of spaces and symbols (‘#’, ‘$’ etc., except for an underscore (‘_’) and a hyphen). If a name you entered is already in the list, the string is colored red and can not be fixed. Also, if double quotes or braces are not balanced in a data string, the string is colored red and can not be fixed. Macro names are converted into uppercase letters, however, you can refer those names by either of uppercase or lowercase.
When you select rows and drag them on the other rows, the order of the macros is changed.
This field is used for finding a string in macro data. As soon as you enter a string, macros contain the string are selected and shown in the list.
This button is used for sorting the macro list by their names. Exceptionally, name of months (JAN, FEB...) are sorted by month order and placed at the top of the list.
This button is used for importing predefined macros from a BibTeX style file. When you click this button, the following sheet is appeared.
By default, “/usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/” directory (which is a standard directory of BibTeX style files) is shown in the list. Choose a style file and select whether overwrite macros with same names or not (a check box at the bottom) and press <Import>.
When you press <Edit Buttons> button in the [Others] tab of the input support panel, TeX command input buttons editor shown below is appeared. There are 30 definitions, each of them corresponds to 30 buttons in the [Others] tab of the input support panel. Buttons are numbered from top-left to top-right(1-10), center-left to center-right(11-20), bottom-left to bottom-right(21-30).
Each button has 4 definitions, title, command, context and param(parameter).
Title is a title (or name) of the button. If no title is supplied, the button becomes disabled.
Command is a TeX command which is really entered when the button is pressed. If a command string contains “{X}”, this part is replaced by a selected text or a predefined parameter explained below. Needless to say, you can put any string which does not contain any TeX command to use a button just as a shortcut to enter a complicated name such as “Dimethylcarbamoyloxy”.
Context selects TeX math/text context for the command. If the command is a math mode command, choose a context ‘math’, choose ‘text’ for text mode command, choose ‘both’ if it works in both mode. BibCompanion automatically detects current mode and append ‘$’s.
Param is a default parameter of the command which has “{X}”. If no letter is selected when a button is pressed, this value is used in place of the selection.
You can change the order of the buttons by selecting rows and drag them to desired position.