[Ilja]

I'm looking for a good endnote alternative that's geared towards the mac-platform. Is there any?

[Macola]

I've heard decent reviews of this but have never tried it:
http://www.sonnysoftware.com/

I used earlier versions of EndNote for Mac, but currently use EndNote 7 for Windows.

[headbirth]

You might want to take a look at DEVONThink or DEVONNote or even DEVONAgent.

http://www.devon-technologies.com/pr...k/overview.php

[squilla]

I've been using Bookends (http://www.sonnysoftware.com/) for a couple of years, and it's better than EndNote, also cheaper and better maintained, with good, very responsive support.

The Devon programs don't support bibliography.

[Fritzi]

Sente

[BHD]

Originally posted by Ilja:
I'm looking for a good endnote alternative that's geared towards the mac-platform. Is there any?

No.

Endnote is really three things:

1) bibliographic database
2) online search/retrieval application
3) citation and bibliographic formatting engine (and plug-in for Word)

None of the apps mentioned here covers all of three, except for Bookends, which the last I looked left a lot to be desired.

A real alternative to Endnote needs to be a fresh start: based on Cocoa, and exploiting the processing capablities of XML and the internet revolution.

[BHD]

Originally posted by BHD:
A real alternative to Endnote needs to be a fresh start: based on Cocoa ...

Or better yet, perhaps, a web app that exploits web services.

[Propofol]

That's funny - I just responded to an old thread this AM, because I didn't see this one...

Here's what I wrote about Bookends:

After reading this thread, I'm of the opinion that Bookends (www.sonnysoftware.com) is still the best solution. I just recently bought this app, and I don't spend a lot of $$ on software. However, the ease of importing references, the ease of searching for references within the app, and the great linking of PDFs (or other files) to a reference blow me away. Best of all, the author is extremely helpful and answers questions very quickly.

This finally allows me to have one place where I can store everything. The saved PDFs can all be held in one folder, so when it's time to backup, you need only copy the database file that contains the references, and make a copy of the folder containing the PDFs.

I believe Bookends 8 will soon be out, which apparently is going to add Unicode compliance and direct PubMed searching. Currently, the app ships with a separate app that allows easy drag and drop addition of references, but it would be nicer if this was incorporated into the app.

Then, when it comes time to write a paper, Bookends makes the process ridiculously easy - with integration into Word and other word processors.

I just read the above, and it sounds rather like I'm a paid consultant, but I'm just a (very) satisfied user.

[Jonesy]

I just wondered whether anyone knew whether Bookends will integrate with Pages. I know that Pages does not support endnotes at the moment but neither did AppleWorks and they worked around that. I know they haven't had much time since its release to look at this but if support was good then I think I would buy it.

By the way Propofol are you an anaesthetist?

[BHD]

Originally posted by Propofol:
I'm of the opinion that Bookends (www.sonnysoftware.com) is still the best solution.

Whether it's the "best" solution does not really address whether it's a "good" solution. I find the UI awkward and heinously ugly, the data model more limited than even Endnote, and it (currently) lacks unicode or XML support.

As I remember Bookends was written in Hypercard back in the dark ages. It shows unfortunately.

I actually think BibDesk has promise, particularly if it gets more developers on board. Hell, how about a Dashboard widget for a bib GUI, backed up by a real database?

[Propofol]

Originally posted by Jonesy:
By the way Propofol are you an anaesthetist? [/B]

Yep. How'd you guess?

Re: Pages, if you check the forum at www.sonnysoftware.com, someone asked about this and it's apparently not in the cards right now because of lack of support for apple events (I think).

[alephnull]

Thanks to Fritzi for mentioning Sente on this thread. I am one of the developers of Sente and I thought that people here might be interested in our current pre-release version, which includes integration with Microsoft Word. The current public version on our web site is 2.0.2, but the current pre-release can be found at:

http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/index.cgi?page=beta

The pre-release is pretty stable and will be released soon as v2.1. The biggest change between now and the official release will be the inclusion of more bibliography formats.

[Love Calm Quiet]

I don't have time to be testing pre-release, but sure look forward to v2.1 !!!

[mchladek]

I will soon be working on my honors thesis and would like something like this to keep track of all the articles I'll need to read.

I use OVID PsychINFO to search for articles. I've played around a bit with Bookends and Sente. It doesn't appear as though Sente supports importing from PsychINFO. Bookends supposedly does, but I can't for the life of me get it to work.

I have added OVID to the filter manager. Bookends' user manual says OVID importing doesn't work with Safari or OmniWeb since neither support MIME types. Therefore, I have tried Camino, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (supposedly all are to work with Bookends). Following the Bookends' manual for using OVID, the browser should download a .cgi file. I have set all three of these browsers to use Bookends as a helper app for .cgi files. When I download the references from OVID though it opens Bookends and just sets there without any importing. I have downloaded the files to the disk and tried importing from Bookends but the .cgi files are greyed out.

Anyone use Bookends with PsychINFO? Or know how to get it to work or a bibliography app that will?

I should note that this is the unregistered version of Bookends. But I thought that would only limit the number of references you can have to 50.

[biscuit]

I just wanted to chime in and say I like Bibdesk . The interface is clean and functional, plus it can import those query.fcgi files from PubMed. But then again I am using LaTeX for my thesis now so it's almost a must. BibTeX seems to work very nicely and LaTeX (I'm using TeXShop btw) has been a godsend really. Not much good if you need Word integration though...

I've just been playing with that Sente beta and I have to say it looks very good. If it had a way to search PubMed (or wherever) it would just about have everything, except maybe auto-sorting of PDFs; I didn't see that. I could've sworn I was looking at another very similar program only a few weeks ago, but I can't remember the name. Anyway, well done to the developers of that, they stand to do very well if they can get it publicised.

biscuit

[Propofol]

There is still nothing that compares to Bookends. The number of permutations of import filters, bibliographic formats, and the ease of searching are unparalleled. Sente is nice eye-candy, but for serious writing/referencing, it's just not yet up to par. Maybe in the future but not yet.

To mchladek I highly suggest that you go to the Bookends forum and ask the person who writes Bookends (Jon) to answer your question. I can almost guarantee to you that he will a) answer within a few hours, and b) offer you a solution to your problem.

[mchladek]

Originally posted by Propofol:
To mchladek I highly suggest that you go to the Bookends forum and ask the person who writes Bookends (Jon) to answer your question. I can almost guarantee to you that he will a) answer within a few hours, and b) offer you a solution to your problem.

Thanks for the tip. I've gotten it to work by saving the file to the disk and then dragging the file onto Bookend's window, but it would be nice to do it directly from the browser.

[biscuit]

Originally posted by Propofol:
Sente is nice eye-candy, but for serious writing/referencing, it's just not yet up to par. Maybe in the future but not yet.

Well I don't want to get into a form over function type of debate, but I think that Sente's 'eye-candy' is pretty important. As mentioned earlier, about a third of all these programs are is a way to organise and view your papers. Hence the visual interface is pretty vital. I should point out that I haven't used Sente or Bookends seriously, however I did try Bookends a year or two ago and its interface put me off. What can I say? I'm interface fickle

I agree that Sente is not ideal yet, but it shows considerable promise. Then again, the Bookends people can always tweak their interface, so maybe the two programs will eventually be very competitive. That can only be a good thing.

biscuit

[Propofol]

I totally agree with the fact that more competition is a good thing. It can only speed along progress in these apps. I'm just glad that we have such a great choice for Macs besides EndNote.

[alephnull]

It doesn't appear as though Sente supports importing from PsychINFO.

If you have an account with Ovid that included PsychINFO access, Sente should be able to search the database directly. Normally this requires that you have a user name and password and that you enter it into the appropriate fields in the Data Sources window in Sente. This solution is best because it will work from anywhere. It may also work if your authentication is by IP address, but you would obviously need to be connected to the authorized network. (For example, if your institution has access, and they provide a proxy server that you can use remotely for web access to Ovid, this will NOT give you direct access using Sente. In this case you would need to be physically located on the authorized network.)

[Shades of Gray]

Bookends 8 was released about 3 weeks ago, and it is native OS X. And along with Mellel will be moving to XML in the near future.