BibRef Pro is a FileMaker Pro database for bibliographic references. It operates on a scheme derived from the BiBTeX standard. BibRef Pro was developed during my thesis work, where I need a database for my bibliographic references that fit scientific requirements and is capable of exporting formatted entries for use with FrameMaker.
BibRef Pro is ShareWare!
That means you can use the unregistered version of BibRef Pro on a trial basis for a limited time of 30 days. If you continue to use BibRef Pro, you must pay $15 to become a registered user of BibRef Pro. The unregistered version is password protected and is restricted in the following way:
1. You only have access to 3 of 13 entry types: article, book and misc. See documentation for information about entry types.
2. You cannot enter information in the fields Abstract, Annotation and ISBN.
Paying the shareware fee gives you complete access to the database with a master password, I will submit to you. To register, please send $15 cash in an envelope to the address below. Sorry, but I will neither accept cheques nor credit cards, because these methods are too expensive in Germany.
Michael Kranz
Nokkstr. 2
D-76137 Karlsruhe
Germany
Don’t forget to tell me your name, address and email-address (if available). Any comments about BibRef Pro are welcome, too. You can send me your suggestions and opinions per email to kranz@fzi.de or visit my home page on the web: http://www.fzi.de/kranz.html
Give BibRef Pro a try! Please support ShareWare!
1.0 Installation and Start
1.1 Files
Installation of BibRef Pro is very easy. Decompressing the archive with Stuffit Expander or a similar decompressor creates a folder called BibRef Pro, which contains the following files:
Please don’t move any of the database files to another location. They all must be located in the same folder. The installation of BibRef Pro will NOT change your system folder. Making an alias of BibRef Pro Bibliography and moving it to your most convenient location is highly recommended.
1.2 Requirements
You need FileMaker Pro from Claris to run BibRef Pro. The system requirements of FileMaker Pro are valid for BibRef Pro, too. System 7 is recommended. BibRef Pro looks best on a 256 color screen, but black and white is also possible.
You need at least SimpleText to read the documentation. To read the formatted version of the documentation, you need FrameMaker form Frame Technology. BibRef Pro has a close relationship to FrameMaker, since it is capable of exporting the Maker Markup Language (MML), but you don’t need FrameMaker to use BibRef Pro!
1.3 Starting up
Double click on BibRef Pro Bibliography or open it with File/New within FileMaker Pro.
2.0 Home Page
After starting BibRef Pro the home page will display. The home page is divided in informational and operational areas.
2.1 Selections
On the left side there is information about the current selection and of which entry types it consists. In FileMaker Pro a selection is a subset of all available records. In the above figure, 3 of 6 records are selected. The buttons on the right of the selection info always operate on the current selection. You can mark or unmark all records in a selection, you can delete or sort a selection or you can export a selection as text or as MML.
The buttons in the middle of the home page generate a selection from the whole set of records. In the right column (green) you can select all records of a specific entry type. In the left column with the red buttons you can select all records with markers set or unset (See section 2.3 for markers). You can also select incomplete records. A record is incomplete, if there is no information in a required field (See section 6.2 for entry fields). On top of the left row you can select all records or inverse the current selection. It is also possible to omit the current record from the selection.
2.2 Citations
The buttons below the word "Citations" always operate on the whole database. You can clear all citation marks and you can import new citations from a text file. In the file dialogue which asks you for the text file, it is important to choose the file format "Text with Tab" from the popup menu. Otherwise the citation import may not work. Please feel free to try this feature out by using the text file "Sample Citations".
2.3 Markers
Two kind of markers are mentioned. The first marker is the user marker, which can be toggled with the buttons Mark or Unmark. The second marker is the citation marker. This marker can only be changed with the citation buttons on the home page. Markers are shown in the lower left corner of each record. The combinations are
2.4 New Records
You can add new records to the database with the buttons on the right side of the home page. Each button generates an empty record of a specific entry type (See section 6.1 for entry types).
2.5 Current Record
Information about the current record is shown in the bottom of the home page. The green field on the left shows the records key. The key is unique over all records and consists in general of the first three letters of the authors name followed by the last two digits of the publication year. The check mark 4 on the right of the key marks a record as complete. If a record is incomplete, the symbol 0 will appear.
The red field on the right of the check mark shows the current entry type. Below you see the marker symbol and concatenated information about the current entry. The blue line at the bottom contains technical information such as creation date and modifying date of the current record.
2.6 General Operation Buttons
At the bottom of the home page and on all other pages of the database there are a few buttons for general operations. These are as follows:
3.0 Help Page
Click on the button "Help" to go to the help page of BibRef Pro. The help page gives a short overview for the most used operations. On the bottom of the help page you can click on the button "Types and Fields" to open the special help database "BibRef Pro Types and Fields":
In the left field (red) you can see all available entry types and in the right field (green) there are all used entry fields. Click on any word to go to a specific page with explanations to an entry type or entry field.
4.0 Current Page
In the main database there is a specific layout for each entry type. Each current page has a similar construction. The following picture shows the book page as an example.
At the top you can enter the key (green). The key is used for citations in a scientific text. To prevent failure of the citation import mechanism it is highly recommended not to use special symbols or blanks inside the key. Please use letters and digits only. On the right of the key you see the check mark which indicates completeness.
At the bottom of the page you can see the marker symbol, the concatenated text of the current record and the buttons for general operations. With the buttons on the left of the page you can switch to another entry type, e.g. if you want the book to become a techreport, click on the button "Techreport".
Please notice that the general button "Current" was exchanged with the button "Home". If you ever got a current page that is not identical with the current entry page (this can happen, if you use FileMaker operations directly, for example duplicate a record or search for a specific record), simply click on the red field, which contains the current entry type. Or change the entry type with one of the buttons at the left. By the way, the "Prev" and "Next" buttons will always switch to the correct page.
The rest of the current page is filled with the entry fields. Required fields are marked with purple words and the special symbol 0. A record is complete, if all required fields are filled out. All other fields are optional. As you enter information in the fields you can follow the concatenation algorithm with the text field at the bottom of the page.
5.0 Additional Information Page
If you click on the button "More", the Additional Information Page will display. This page is common to all entry types. Here you can enter general information such as keywords, annotations or ISBN numbers. The next figure shows the Additional Information Page:
The Additional Information Page should be used for searching, because its fields are common to all entry types. All fields on this page are optional, but it is recommended to set at least the correct language for the current entry.
At the top of the page the key is displayed together with the completeness checkmark. At the bottom you see the technical information line together with the marker symbol and the concatenated text of the entry.
The general operation buttons are the same as in the other pages with exception of the "More" button, which was replaced by the "Current" button.
6.0 Types and Fields
The operation scheme of BibRef Pro is derived from the BibTeX standard. That means, the entry types and entry fields from BibTeX are available within BibRef Pro. There are 13 entry types. Each entry types consists of several entry fields, which are classified either as required fields or as optional fields. Required fields must be filled out to make an entry complete. Optional fields can contain additional information about an entry.
6.1 Entry Types
article
An article from a journal or magazine.
book
A book with an explicit publisher.
booklet
A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or sponsoring institution.
inbook
A part of a book, which may be a chapter and/or a range of pages.
incollection
A part of a book with its own title.
inproceedings
An article in a conference proceedings.
manual
Technical documentation.
mastersthesis
A Master’s thesis.
misc
Use this type when nothing else fits.
phdthesis
A Ph.D. thesis.
proceedings
The proceedings of a conference.
techreport
A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series.
unpublished
A document with an author and title, but not formally published.
6.2 Entry Fields
address
Publisher’s address. For major publishing houses, just the city is given. For small publishers, you can help the reader by giving the complete address.
annote
An annotation. It is not used by the standard bibliography styles, but may be used by others that produce an annotated bibliography.
author
The name(s) of the author(s), in the format: »surname ‘,’ abbreviated first name { ‘;’ surname ‘,’ abbreviated first name }«
booktitle
Title of a book, part of which is being cited.
chapter
A chapter number.
edition
The edition of a book. For example, »second revised edition«
editor
Name(s) of editor(s), typed in author format. If there is also an author field, then the editor field gives the editor of the book or collection in which the reference appears.
howpublished
How something strange has been published.
institution
The institution that published the work.
journal
A journal name. Abbreviations are provided for many journals.
key
Used for creating and alphabetizing a label. This field is identical with the citation label in the running text. Format: First 3 chars of the first authors name and the last 2 digits of the year. Identical keys must be distinguished with a little latin letter. Example: Ben92a
month
The month in which the work was published or, for an unpublished work, in which it was written.
note
Any additional information that can help the reader.
number
The number of a journal, magazine, or technical report. An issue of a journal or magazine is usually identified by its volume and number; the organization that issues a technical report usually gives it a number.
organization
The organization sponsoring a conference.
pages
One or more page numbers or ranges of numbers, such as 42–111 or 7, 41, 73–97.
publisher
The publisher’s name.
school
The name of the school where a thesis was written.
series
The name of a series or set of books.
title
The work’s title.
type
The type of a technical report, for example, »Research Note«.
volume
The volume of a journal or multivolume book.
year
The year of a publication or, for an unpublished work, the year it was written. It should consist only of numerals, such as »1994«.
7.0 Generation of Bibliographies
The following description is related to the use of BibRef Pro in conjunction with FrameMaker. If you prefer another publishing system, feel free to change the corresponding field definitions in BibRef Pro. Nevertheless the basic principle of inserting and collecting citations in your scientific work is nearly identical in every well designed publishing system.
7.1 Preparing your work in FrameMaker
To put a bibliographic citation into your running text you must insert a marker of type "author". The marker text must be identical with the corresponding key field in BibRef Pro. The style of your visible citation should also be identical with the key. For example, look at the following citation:
[Ben93]
It is very important not to use brackets or slashes within the marker text, because this would effect the marker collection process. Apart from this make sure that for a marker in your text there is always a corresponding entry in BibRef Pro.
7.2 Collecting Citations in FrameMaker
When the time is come to generate a bibliography, the first action is to generate an author index. This is an alphabetic index of all markers of type "author". To use this index with BibRef Pro, you must delete the group titles in the index. Switch to the reference page "AIX". Look for the line with the paragraph tag "GroupTitlesAIX". Delete the contents of this line without removing the paragraph marker! Activate "Text symbols" in the View menu to perform this operation.
Look for the line with paragraph tag "SeparatorsAIX" (It is the "1, 2-3" line). The first char in this line is a blank. Replace it with a tab. Switch back to body pages. Save the index.
Bring your main document or book in the foreground and generate the index again. The group titles will disappear and you will end up with a alphabetically sorted list of your citations. Save the new author index in text format. This will produce a text file which consists of a text line for each citation. The text line contains the citation key, a tab symbol and some page numbers. These page numbers are important for the citation import mechanism in BibRef Pro.
The file "Sample Citations" has the correct format.
7.3 Importing Citations into BibRef Pro
Go to the home page of BibRef Pro and click on the button "Get" below the word "Citations". A new window will appear, which looks like this:
The citation import operation works as follows: First, all existing citation markers will be removed within the main database. This is the same effect you will get, if you click on the "Clear" button. In the next step, control will went over to the above FileMaker document "BibRef Pro Citations". You will be asked for a text file:
1. Select "Text with Tab" in the popup menu at the bottom of the dialogue.
2. Select the author index text file from section 7.2
3. Click "OK"
The text file will be read in and for each entry in the main database, which has a corresponding entry in the Citation Index database, the citation marker will be set. Finally a subset of all cited entries will be selected and sorted.
Please feel free to try this mechanism out with the text file "Sample Citations", which contains a subset of the sample entries in the main database.
7.4 Exporting References out of BibRef Pro
The next action you must perform, is to export the current (cited) selection out of BibRef Pro. If you click on the button "Export", a text file will be produced, which contains a line for each entry. A line consists of the key and a concatenated bibliographic description of the entry. Look into the file "Sample Text Export" for an example.
For use with FrameMaker, it is recommended to click on the button "MML" instead. This will produce a text file which contains the syntax of the "Maker Markup Language (MML)". This language allows preformatting of the bibliographic entries and supports the final formatting of the bibliography.
To generate a syntactically correct MML file, BibRef Pro has to add header information to the MML file. This task will be performed within the special FileMaker document "BibRef Pro MML Concatenation", shown in the following picture.
The export file of the main database, "bibmml.txt" will be read in and the final MML file including header information, "bibref.mml", will be produced.
7.5 Generate Bibliography in FrameMaker
To make a bibliography with FrameMaker, all you have to do is to import the file "bibref.mml" (into document, not with reference) to an appropriate place in a FrameMaker document. You should have predefined a paragraph tag with name "BibRef" (please use lower- and uppercase letters exactly as shown), which contains all the formatting, you want for your bibliography. The following example is an import of the sample file "bibref.mml":
[Ben93] Bender, K. (ed.): PROFIBUS - The Fieldbus for Industrial Automation. Prentice Hall, 1993
[Kra94] Kranz, M.; Bergmann, J.; Bender, K.: A Flexible Diagnosis System for the Testing of Networked Microsystems. In: Reichl, H.; Heuberger, A. (ed.): Micro System Technologies 94; 4th International Conference and Exhibition on Micro Electro, Opto, Mechanical Systems and Components, Berlin, October 19 – 21, 1994, p. 813 – 822, VDE-Verlag, Berlin, 1994
[Rie94] Rieger, B.; Kranz, M.: PROFIBUS Fieldbus Center. published on the World Wide Web, http://www.fzi.de/divisions/mrt/fieldbus/overview.html, Forschungszentrum Informatik, Karlsruhe, 1994
A first look shows you the preformatting of each entry, because the titles are italicized. At a second look you will notice markers at each key. These markers are not author markers, to avoid conflicts with the collecting of citations. The BibRef markers are of type 15. If you want, you can rename this marker type to "BibRef". Unfortunately, for customizing FrameMaker on the Mac you need ResEdit.
Why a special marker for bibliographic entries? They are for verification purposes. You can generate a type 15 marker index as shown in section 7.2 and verify the list with the author index. With hypertext links activated you can use the type 15 index as "jump table" for your bibliography.
8.0 BibRef Pro Registration Form
Version 1.0
Confirmation containing the master password will be given by email unless otherwise requested.
To register, please send $15 cash in an envelope to the address below. Sorry, but I will neither accept cheques nor credit cards, because these methods are too expensive to handle in Germany.
Michael Kranz
Nokkstr. 2
D-76137 Karlsruhe
Germany
You can contact me per email at kranz@fzi.de or visit my home page on the web: http://www.fzi.de/kranz.html
