Puzzles about importing from Bookends

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Given what was said about dragging something from DevonThink that had been dragged from Bookends, I experimented with a DT watch group, but since then I have tried a different strategy. In Bookends, I have put the DTP URL into the “Abstract” field, so that if I take references directly from BE, I can then use a stamp to copy this to an attribute DevonThinkURL.

Copying and pasting a Bookends link does not seem to work with more than one reference.

What does work is Cmnd-Opt-drag. However this has three puzzles:

(a) If I copy n references, I get n notes that are correctly labelled and with the required data. However, I ALSO get n-1 notes all named “new” with the bibliographic data in $Notes in what I think may be RIS format. (second and subsequent notes are duplicated in this way.) This is not a big deal because it is quick and easyto select and delete these n-1 new notes, though I am puzzled about why it is happening.
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(b) Sometimes, $Text contains a nicely formatted reference, as TBRef says it should, but sometimes $Text contains bibliographic details in BibTex format. (I have applied a stamp to modify $Name to my preferred pattern.)

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Again, this is not a major issue as I may end up overwriting this anyway, but it is a puzzle. The BibTex seems to appear more when I drag lots of notes though I am not sure I can reproduce it consistently.

(3) Tinderbox seems to parse the BibTex correctly for Journal articles, and most other reference types, but fails for edited books, as in the following example:

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$Text shows that the required information about the editor is there, but the import does not extract it into an attribute.

Again this is a minor issue, because I will have comparatively few edited books (most refs will be to specific chapters, and book chapter works fine.) I have created an $Editor attribute and can manually copy and paste into it.

(4) A point I made in another post applies here. As TBRef explains, TB overwrites the Bookends Notes with the bibliographic reference. It would seem better to append it. But as that is a separate issue I will create a separate post on that.

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We’ll take a look, but this is almost certainly a problem in your Bookends configuration. Tinderbox doesn’t touch BibTeX; most likely, the Bookends RIS export template for edited volumes is failing to populate a field it should.

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Given that, please do nothing, and I will check my Bookends configuration, including the RIS template. At the moment I am using Cmd-Opt-drag and that seems to be working reasonably.

But in my view the bigger issue is that when TB identifies a Note as having a Bookends URL, it overwrites $Text instead of appending the reference to it. It is frustrating because sometimes the notes imported from Bookends appear in TB, and a few moments later, when the Note is recognised and the References prototype is applied, it disappears to be replaced by the formatted reference.

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