On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Alex Vergara Gil <a...@cphr.edu.cu> wrote: > El 20/04/2012 08:22 a.m., Manolo Martínez escribió: > >> On 04/20/12 at 09:57am, Alex Vergara Gil wrote: >>> >>> El 20/04/2012 07:46 a.m., PhilipPirrip escribió: >>>> >>>> On 04/20/2012 04:30 PM, Alex Vergara Gil wrote: >>>>> >>>>> why should I move out of LyX to edit my Bib files?
I guess one way of looking at this---implicit in many of the negative reactions to your idea of integrating a reference manager into LyX---is to consider whether BibTeX files really are text files. Many people, myself included, would say no. Bibtex files are database files that just happen to be human-readable. They follow a formal syntax (no matter how loosely defined) and are best managed with applications that enforce that syntax. Manual editing is inherently error-prone---we are not Turing-machines, after all, and, therefore, very time consuming. Witness the abundance of syntax checkers, pretty-printers, etc that flourished in the early years of Bibtex. Hence, reference managers are the tools of choice, of which JabRef is an excellent example (and BibDesk is even better, unfortunately it's for Mac only). Moreover, it is not even clear that BibTeX will remain the only database format for TeX users. Biber, a much more flexible and heavily developed BibTeX replacement, is starting to integrate other formats (such as EndNote). One more reason, in my opinion, to keep LyX away from these complexities. Cheers, Stefano -- __________________________________________________ Stefano Franchi Associate Research Professor Department of Hispanic Studies Ph: +1 (979) 845-2125 Texas A&M University Fax: +1 (979) 845-6421 College Station, Texas, USA stef...@tamu.edu http://stefano.cleinias.org
