PublicationYear or PublicationDate?

This is probably a very small thing, but: what is the format for the PublicationYear attribute?

Is it a full date, i.e. Day.Month.Year, or just the year?

If it is the full date, why is it called PublicationYear?

The system attribute PublicationYear is described here. As it aligns with an RIS tag, the latter defines the possible format.

It is a String-type attribute and not a Date-type attribute. Generally it holds a string containing the year number and nothing else, e.g. “1740” or “2017”.

System attributes generally (always?) include ‘Date’ in the attribute name, e.g. EndDate.

Thank you for the fast answer, Mark. I’m just starting to work with Tinderbox and a lot is new to me :slight_smile:

Had to look up the meaning of “RIS tag” and didn’t know about “aTbRef”.

Since PublicationYear is a String-type attribute, it seems that one can use it for just a year or any other more detailed information, including month and day, if available.

I’m trying to figure out how to use Tinderbox as a container and manager of a collection of references. Someone else has created a large collection of references and published them in 11 pdf files. Now I would like to import all this data into Tinderbox and separate the reference text from all the other information, which should become attributes. I have to find a way to do this in an automated way, if possible.

Maybe I should create another thread about this on the forum to see who can give advice on how to best do this?

Welcome to the Tinderbox community and you’re in the right place to ask questions. :grinning:

I don’t know what RIS stands for, but it is the acronym of an interchange format used in reference/citation management. However just because that’s the reason for a system (i.e. pre-defined) attribute doesn’t mean you need to use it for that. If you want a Date-type attribute called ‘PublicationDate’ you can make your own - see the User attribute Inspector.

Anyway, ask any questions you have!

Tinderbox cannot collect the reference from the PDF. you need some other script to pick the references and insert them in formatted manner. I have been experimenting with a similar workflow. So, far the best method I came up is using Kebyoard Maestro. Look at the dicussion I had in KM forum: Scrapping references from Table of contents - Questions & Suggestions - Keyboard Maestro Discourse

  • I can share the latest macro if you use KM
  • the macro is a bit quirky; needs a lot of cleanup to be used
  • the macro is developed to generate Bibtex. It can be exported to RIS

There are also some scripts in Github which can collect references from a given PDF into a Bibtex format. But, the one I get best result from was this one:

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Hello Desalegn,

Thank you for your reply. I have Keyboard Maestro, but haven’t used it yet.

I will have a look at the links you posted.