Re: [Ebib-users] Ebib 1.5.2 released; git repository

[Joost K. <joo...@fa...>]

hi thomas,

> first: thanks so much. I absolutely love the new release. The manual  
> looks gorgeous, virtual databases are fabulous, and the possibility to  
> customize the latex cite commands is wonderful for me (I use ConTeXt  
> and need a somewhat different style). I use ebib regularly to insert  
> references into my TeX files; it is the most convenient and fastest  
> thing out there.

thanks. :-)

> I'm still not quite happy with its editing functionalities. Using it  
> on a quite big database (more than 1000 entries), two things struck  
> me; one is inconvenient, the other a bug, I think:
> 
> 1. When ebib has trouble parsing a database, it simply gives up - no  
> error code, no hint, it just sits there. Is it feasible to provide  
> some sort of feedback that something went wrong? I'm not asking for  
> helpful error codes (I'm aware that this would demand lots of work),  
> but at least some message would be nice.

that shouldn't be impossible to do, of course. i'll see to what extent it's
possible to add some failure messages to the current code.

in the end, though, i suspect the file-reading code should be rewritten,
allowing for more self-checks and more warning/error messages to the user.

> 2. ebib is very sensitive to unbalanced braces in any field. Some of  
> my entries contain words in Greek Beta code. Here is an example:
> 
> @Article{	  harderzwei,
>    annote	= {Examen de l'antith{\`e}se du distique c{\'e}l{\`e}bre:
> 		  EIMI D EGW... E)PISTA/MENOS.},
>    author	= {Harder, Richard},
>    journal	= {Hermes},
>    pages		= {381--384},
>    title		= {Zwei Zeilen von Archilochos},
>    volume	= 80,
>    year		= 1952
> }
> 
> ebib chokes on the unbalanced closing parenthesis in line 3; but its  
> behavior is dangerous: it just stops parsing the entry at this point  
> and quietly forgets the rest. When I save the database in ebib, I get  
> this:

oops... i should have thought about that... i actually ran into this
problem myself once, but that was on a (multiline) field i created with
ebib, and i solved it by checking for unbalanced parentheses when
*creating* multiline fields. but for existing .bib-files, that's pointless,
of course.

what i *should* have done is to make ebib not choke on unbalanced
parentheses. the simplest way to do that is to tell ebib that () are not to
be considered parentheses at all.

unfortunately, bibtex itself makes this simple solution unnecessarily
difficult, because it actually *allows* braces to be used to enclose an
entry. that is, this:

@article(key,
  ...
)

is equivalent to:

@article{key,
  ...
}

but there is probably a way to work around that. with a bit of luck, i'll
have something put together in a few days. i'll let you know when i do.

best,

joost


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments