Re: [Bibdesk-users] sltightly OT: conversion to biblatex

[Simon S. <si...@si...>]

On 03.10.2008, at 08:14, Alex Hamann wrote:

> My apologies for this drift into OT but I feel that my question is
> best posed here as bibdesk will be involved as a means to the goal.
>
> I am strongly thinking about migrating completely to biblatex (coming
> from jurabib). When one reads the manual it becomes clear that this
> is a decision which is difficult to revert as biblatex supports many
> options which - if used - make it hard for any other bibstyle to deal
> with the bibliography.
> I would like to know if anybody has actually undergone the effort of
> converting a large bib file to adjust it to biblatex's new fields
> (like titleaddon) and if there are any tricks in BibDesk which make
> this effort less strenuous. I am especially concerned about adjusting
> all the titles (something where BibDesk can very probably not offer
> any assistance).

I took the same route, going from jurabib to biblatex, and don't  
regret it for a moment, although I did it right towards the end of my  
PhD, a moment where you normally shouldn't do suchmassive changes.  
Everything went well though.

I don't have too much specific advice for you though. Maybe the most  
important thing: You don't have to use all of biblatex's option. The  
package really covers about every possible situation and many of them  
wont apply for you. I would start with really tackling the issues  
where you find jurabib lacking. The addition of the bookauthor field  
was such an instance for me, then slowly proceed towards more advanced  
stuff. One area which was important for me was the whole area  
translation/original publication, but that really depends on the field  
you're in. Titleaddon, for example, is something I don't have any real  
use for, and to be honest I don't see many scenarios where this is  
actually needed (maintitle, on the other hand, did fill a need for me).

So again: concentrate on the areas which actually concern you, there's  
absolutely no need to use all the fields biblatex provides.

simon
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