How to combine Tinderbox, Bookends and Mellel?

Hi everyone! I recently decided to write my articles with Mellel rather than with Latex and finally adopted Bookends while I was using Endnote for years. As a consequence, I had to change some of my habits. As you know, Bookends has a nice feature: a short window from which one can easily insert references on the fly, which is very useful when you work in the field of humanities.

As I map my drafts using Map view in Tinderbox, I’d like to be able to insert references in Tinderbox so that Mellel can read them once my notes are exported. Unfortunately, Mellel reads only formatted references as you can see below. Did someone already try to do it all the same? Thank for your suggestions.

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Hello @dominiquerenauld, I used Mellel for a while, but could not get this to work. It seems that you cannot copy and paste the citation id from elsewhere. It need to be input directly from Bookends into Mellel. I ended up settling with Pandoc and Citeproc. After a while I also dropped Bookends because it was running very slow on the M1. Now I am using Bibdesk, keeping all my references in a Bibtex file.

Thwre is nothing wrong with Bookends. It’s real strength, and why I keep using it, is—like Tinderbox—it is complex, ornate, but repays some assembly like the user.

I don’t use

I tend to use standard Bookends export. So, I’m not sure what the above feature is, but I will bet it uses the currently selected export format on Bookends. Furthermore the format you want may bot be built in. But, as with Tinderbox, we don’t worry about such limitations as we can make our own. I’ve looked for ‘floaty box thing’ by Help isn’t helping.

I think the issue is making the floating box use the right, i.e. desired, format. Assuming that is the case, you want to make a custom format in the Bookends’ Biblio → Formats Manager. It’s a scary interface. But do check out the Bookends support forum or the Tech Support. Jon, the developer, has always (In my experience) been very responsive and his forum is polite and helpful.

Ah, I’ve found this page on the Bookends site, but I can’t invoke it on my Mac (FWIW, macOS 10.14.6). I’d check with Bookends.

But, if no result do come back here.

I hope that helps :slight_smile:

Thank you for your answers! I finally found that there was a way to convert text to citations. It’s documented in Mellel’s site: https://www.mellel.com/mellel-flare/Content/Topics/Writing%20your%20Document/Bibliography/Converting%20Text%20to%20Citations.htm
One can therefore use Tinderbox with Bookends and Mellel in this way, but with some limitations. I have to enter manually in Tinderbox a page number whereas Bookends does it automatically with Mellel using floating citations:

And yes, Derrida wrote about differance with a “a”.

Execellent. Vive la différance!

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… I wanted to say: “… about différance” with a “é”…

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That’s funny. I purchased Bookends after @PaulWalters started a thread to let us know about this new feature. When I read this thread you already replied with a description of this feature that immediately reminded me of the incredible aTbRef (no surprise :smile:).

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Hah. That was back in 2018. The feature is cool and after further dogging, you have to go to the Bookends manual, on page 44 (v13.5.3 manual). Pertinent part for later readers of the thread (my italics):

You can access your reference library at any time from any application (typically a word processor) via a floating window that is invoked by double tapping a trigger key. By default this is the Control key, but in preferences (Scan & Bib tab) you can assign any of these keys: Shift, Control, Option, Command, and Caps Lock.

I can confirm the feature opens in both Tinderbox and Mellel 5. Exactly what you insert from the command bar is a matter of configuration. for instance in Tinderbox8, I’m able to import my usual LaTeX citation:

\cite{englebart:1984:apia}

But that format is set at the bbee end of this. On the floating bar, don’t overlook the drop-down next to the insert button (left of the search term text). I think you can access any format(s) you have enabled in the Bookends Formats Manager (Biblio menu). I the format above is one created in Bookends for use with my LaTeX tool (texstudio) in recent thesis writing.

@dominiquerenauld Does that help?

Thank you!
It seems indeed that Bookends is designed for working with Latex:

But I see no option to set Bookends in order to work with Tinderbox. No matter: I export and let Mellel convert my citations.

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How do you want Bookends and Tinderbox to work together. You can add Bookends entities into Tinderbox notes via the citation bar. Remember, you choose, in Bookends what formats you wish to export, whether they got to Mellel, Word, Tinderbox or some other app.Bookends has lots of built-in formats, but if you don’t like the defaults you can edit them or add your own custom formats.

OK. I’ll see that tomorrow… oups: it’s already tomorrow. :wink:

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