Re: [Bibdesk-users] Best practices for URL fields?

[James H. <jam...@vi...>]

On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:59 AM, Christiaan Hofman wrote:

>> It appears that I should use <$remoteURL> to access remote urls, and
>> the built-in template editor provides <$remoteURL.absoluteString/> as
>> the appropriate tag/modifier for a url for a web page. That yields a
>> url when used in a template with a test web page reference. I tried
>> the form <$remoteURL.absoluteString.@firstObject> and also the same
>> tag without the absoluteString modifier, with test references that  
>> had
>> one or more than one linked web site. None of the tags that contained
>> "@firstObject" yielded any text when used in a template.
>>
>
> No, not $remoteURL but $remoteURLs (it's a collection), $remoteURL is
> deprecated, as is $localURL and $localUrlPath.

Sorry to be so dense, and thanks a lot for your patience. It looks  
like the following:

<$remoteURLs.absoluteString.@firstObject/>

...gives the desired behavior in my templates. It ignores local files  
and yields the first listed url.

> The template editor is not completely updated yet. In fact it cannot  
> deal with collections like local files and remote URLs, you can only  
> do that by hand.

OK. I am writing the templates by hand--but I was using the editor for  
spot-checking the syntax of template keys and modifiers when I was  
unsure. I understand that the docs and editor are to some extent  
chasing recent changes.

> Again: there are URL fields (mostly deprecated) and the new linked
> objects. They are not the same. Anything starting with $fields and
> $urls refers to the (URL) fields, never the linked objects. To refer
> to the linked objects you should use the $localFiles and $remoteURLs
> *collection* keys.

Understood, thanks.

Jim Harrison
UVa