"insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

Re: Re: Some files in trunk no more compilable

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

On 1 June 2012 07:56, Scott Kostyshak <skostysh <at> princeton.edu> wrote:
> I find that the GUI for adding a bibtex bibliography is not optimized for
> the most common use: adding your own bibliography. Is it very common to use
> one of the example bibliographies? I also find that it's unintuitive if
> you're not used to it and want to add your own .bib. I remember thinking I
> was in the wrong place when I went to Add and was presented a list that I
> did not recognize. It took me a little while to realize that I had to go to
> Add and then Browse.
>
> I think that when you go to Add, it should have the same function as what is
> currently Add > Browse. I would propose putting a second "Add" button below
> the current "Add" button for the example .bibs.

Hi Scott,

  A week ago I posted a list of bugs that I would pay to get fixed.

  If you get anywhere with this, I'll send you $100.  I know it's
pittance, sorry.

John

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

Scott Kostyshak wrote:
> I would like to get some opinions on this before I start working on it. Am I
> alone in thinking the GUI is confusing? Do most people use the example
> .bibs more than their own .bibs? Or perhaps people commonly store their
> user .bibs in the path so that what I am calling example .bibs also
> contains user .bibs?

I do the latter (all my bib databases are in the home texmf path, so they are 
in that list). That's why I wouldn't call this "example bibs".

Actually, I think that this should be encouraged. I think most people use 
their bib databases for more than one document, so a common place makes sense. 
Plus, you do not have to care for paths (i.e. when working on different 
machines). So my counter-argument would be that bib databases outside texmf 
should be the exception, not the rule.

As to the GUI: To begin with, I think some tooltips would help a lot.

Jürgen

RE: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

From: John Tapsell [johnflux <at> gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 3:21 AM

>On 1 June 2012 07:56, Scott Kostyshak <skostysh <at> princeton.edu> wrote:
>> I find that the GUI for adding a bibtex bibliography is not optimized for
>> the most common use: adding your own bibliography. Is it very common to use
>> one of the example bibliographies? I also find that it's unintuitive if
>> you're not used to it and want to add your own .bib. I remember thinking I
>> was in the wrong place when I went to Add and was presented a list that I
>> did not recognize. It took me a little while to realize that I had to go to
>> Add and then Browse.
>>
>> I think that when you go to Add, it should have the same function as what is
>> currently Add > Browse. I would propose putting a second "Add" button below
>> the current "Add" button for the example .bibs.

>Hi Scott,

>A week ago I posted a list of bugs that I would pay to get fixed.

>If you get anywhere with this, I'll send you $100.  I know it's
>pittance, sorry.

Hi John,

Thank you for your generous offer ($100 is far from pittance! Especially for the small amount of work this
patch would require.) but your encouragement is more than enough. If this idea is rejected, I'll still go
ahead and send you the patch.

Thanks,

Scott

RE: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

From: Jürgen Spitzmüller [spitz <at> lyx.org]
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 3:23 AM

>Scott Kostyshak wrote:
>> I would like to get some opinions on this before I start working on it. Am I
>> alone in thinking the GUI is confusing? Do most people use the example
>> .bibs more than their own .bibs? Or perhaps people commonly store their
>> user .bibs in the path so that what I am calling example .bibs also
>> contains user .bibs?

>I do the latter (all my bib databases are in the home texmf path, so they are
>in that list). That's why I wouldn't call this "example bibs".

Good point, Jürgen. I now think that "example bibs" would be a horrible name.

>Actually, I think that this should be encouraged. I think most people use
>their bib databases for more than one document, so a common place makes sense.
>Plus, you do not have to care for paths (i.e. when working on different
>machines). So my counter-argument would be that bib databases outside texmf
>should be the exception, not the rule.

Excellent point. I'm not sure where I stand on this but your argument is strong. Something that I think would
still be in line with this good practice would be to allow for a personal .bib folder. I would personally
prefer to have my custom .bibs listed by themselves and not mixed in with the others. Does Preferences >
Paths have room for another path?

>As to the GUI: To begin with, I think some tooltips would help a lot.

Agreed.

Thanks for the comments,

Scott

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

Scott Kostyshak wrote:
> Excellent point. I'm not sure where I stand on this but your argument is
> strong. Something that I think would still be in line with this good
> practice would be to allow for a personal .bib folder. I would personally
> prefer to have my custom .bibs listed by themselves and not mixed in with
> the others. Does Preferences > Paths have room for another path?

We have to hook into TeX's kpathsea mechanism (which provides the respective 
paths).

What would be a good idea is to add an option to hide databases from the 
global texmf path and only show the databases in $TEXMFHOME. This would in 
practice do what you want: All bib databases shipped with the TeX distribution 
(the "example files") would be hidden and only your own ones shown.

The file bibFiles.lst which is used as input has the full paths, so we can 
distinguish the files. The TEXMFHOME path could be queried with

kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFHOME

in the TeXFiles.py script and stored somewhere. 

Probably the best would be to let TeXFiles.py produce yet another file 
texpaths.lst which holds the results of
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFMAIN
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFDIST
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFHOME

Jürgen

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Scott Kostyshak <skostysh <at> princeton.edu> wrote:
> I would like to get some opinions on this before I start working on it. Am I
> alone in thinking the GUI is confusing?
>
Definitely not. When I started using LyX, it took me several months to
get to the bottom of how to use BibTeX bibliography. I even wrote a
step-by-step procedure in the LyX Essentials [1] (see Section 12). I
do not have any specific ideas GUI-wise, but I do think that it would
be nice if the entire process of inserting your own citations could be
rendered more intuitive.

Regards
Liviu

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/tsewiki/resources/latex/LyX_Essentials.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

Liviu Andronic wrote:
> Definitely not. When I started using LyX, it took me several months to
> get to the bottom of how to use BibTeX bibliography. I even wrote a
> step-by-step procedure in the LyX Essentials [1] (see Section 12). I
> do not have any specific ideas GUI-wise, but I do think that it would
> be nice if the entire process of inserting your own citations could be
> rendered more intuitive.

I think we need to improve the documentation. The goal would be to make people 
_not_recommend to "access Insert > List/TOC > BibTEX > Add > Browse and select 
your BibTEX database", but to advise them to store the bib files in the TEXMF 
path if there are not any specific workflow constrains which require the file 
to be in the working directory (and explain the advantages of the TEXMF 
location).

Jürgen

Re: "insert bibtex bibliography" GUI proposal

On 1 June 2012 09:40, Jürgen Spitzmüller <spitz <at> lyx.org> wrote:
> Liviu Andronic wrote:
>> Definitely not. When I started using LyX, it took me several months to
>> get to the bottom of how to use BibTeX bibliography. I even wrote a
>> step-by-step procedure in the LyX Essentials [1] (see Section 12). I
>> do not have any specific ideas GUI-wise, but I do think that it would
>> be nice if the entire process of inserting your own citations could be
>> rendered more intuitive.
>
> I think we need to improve the documentation.

If you need people to read documentation, the GUI is too complicated.

It should be so simple that you don't need documentation.

John