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From: Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Cc: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>
Subject: Re: [OT] Don't use BibTeX!
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 18:39:30 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87txa5j4tp.fsf@berkeley.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 20140405213324.5e88c2fa@aga-netbook

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:

> Dnia 2014-04-05, o godz. 09:46:39
> Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> napisał(a):
>
>> I have sometimes run into problems (mostly with BibTeX) when the
>
> Sorry for being off-topic, but I can't resist: *please* *don't* *use*
> *BibTeX*.  On the scale of "tools that solve problems" vs. "tools that
> create problems" (cf. http://xkcd.com/1343/ ;)), it is located on the
> far right.

Now now, the first sentence on http://www.bibtex.org/Using/ says that to
use Bibtex, "Just create a plain text file and apply what has been
explained in section BibTeX File Format."!  It doesn't say anything
about how to use the manual. ;)

> (For instance, to be able to customize its bibliography style, you
> could (a) give up, (b) use some user-friendly (or not) front-end,
> having less power than BibTeX itself (obviously!), or (c) learn
> BibTeX's own, very peculiar, stack-based ad-hoc language grown to
> describe bibliography styles.  Not good.  Also, if you're unlucky and
> you write in some non-English language, well, you're unlucky with
> BibTeX, especially if e.g. your name starts with a non-Latin letter.
> Etc.)

I mostly use bibtex because that's what I learned, and none of these
issues apply to me at this (early) stage in my career.  I have no need
for customizing my bibliography style.  I suppose this will matter more
to me when I start sending things out for publication, but at this point
I'm still just trying to write the damn dissertation...

> Use biblatex instead.  It's more modern, it's being supported, it
> knowns that there exist things like UTF-8 and non-English languages,
> it supports more citation styles etc.

I have heard this, but haven't investigated biblatex because I haven't
yet really felt the need.

I keep my reading list and notes in Org, then export them to a .bib file
using org-bibtex.  Does biblatex support .bib files?  If not, what would
be required to support a biblatex-based workflow in Org?

Thanks for keeping me honest!

Best,
Richard

next prev parent reply	other threads:[~2014-04-07  1:41 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-05  4:59 Images not showing up in PDF output Mark S.
2014-04-05  9:55 ` Eric S Fraga
2014-04-05 16:46   ` Richard Lawrence
2014-04-05 19:33     ` [OT] Don't use BibTeX! (was: Images not showing up in PDF output) Marcin Borkowski
2014-04-07  1:39       ` Richard Lawrence [this message]
2014-04-07  2:58         ` [OT] Don't use BibTeX! Thomas S. Dye
2014-04-07  3:50           ` Biblatex and Org [was: [OT] Don't use BibTeX!] Richard Lawrence
2014-04-07  8:34             ` Thomas S. Dye
2014-04-07 15:12               ` Biblatex and Org Richard Lawrence
2014-04-06 18:14     ` Images not showing up in PDF output Mark S.

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