Reference prototype, Bookends imports, and note titles

I found this [from an unknown contributor] in the Backstage note as a reported issue, but it’s one i think can be addressed here. The note reads:

I’m really loving using ziplinks! I like to import Bookend citations so I can link the citation to other notes.

Unfortunately, the prototype Bookends creates puts the full title of the journal/book as the title making the use of ziplinks a bit unwieldy. I have to type in the full title if I want to use any of the modifiers like anchors and many titles use colons often leading to ziplink errors. I’ve been manually modifying the citation title to an in-text citation format (author date) which makes it a lot faster and easier to link.
Is it possible to change the Bookends citation prototype so it imports it that way? Is this a question for the Bookend’s forum?

Many thanks!

There are two ways this can be addressed now - for those with the need.

Change in Bookends
Tinderbox reads the RIS format data as dragged from Bookends. If you are comfortable with Bookends’s formats managers (if not see the Bookends manual, or forum or support). If you change the RIS exporter’s T1 parameter to your desired format, then the Tinderbox $Name will be correct.

Change in Tinderbox
Why not change the Tinderbox ‘Reference’ prototype so that it stored the reference main title is some other attribute and renames the default $Name to one of your choosing. Use an edict as you don’t want this running all the time and an edict is the least aggressive automatic way of doing this; you could use a stamp, but that is a manual process—you might forget.

Hopefully that helps a few people who might be grappling with this. IIRC, the ‘Reference’ prototype behaviour is a reaction to RIS data in dropped data and this might come from other reference sources, so the in-Tinderbox app option (#2) above seems a more sensible approach and easily tweak-able within Tinderbox.

HTH :slight_smile:

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Great tips, @mwra, as usual. One thing that didn’t sit well with me was the fact that some information was being left behind, e.g. the translator’s name. I didn’t know that Tbx was using the RIS format so probably I should have look there to fix this!

(Not knowing this, I made a small template of sorts with a script to import selected references in Bookends and to post the tbx note link back to the reference. Could I share it here or should I start a new thread?)

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Start a new thread so people looking for the specific keywords will be able to find it better. And thanks for sharing!

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Done!

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This looks very interesting - thanks

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I’ve been scratching my head over how to do this - thanks for laying it out so clearly.

I love that there are SO MANY smart people on this forum!

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