[Techtalk] Procite Alternative

[Terri Oda]

On Sep 2, 2004, at 10:59 AM, Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 12:31:42AM +1000, Sue Stones wrote:
>> Does anyone know if there is a Linux version of Procite or an
>> alternative to it.  I haven't used procite but according to my uni
>> website its a database program which enables you to organise
>> bibliographic references, and produce reference lists in a range of
>> standard and custom styles.
> For paperwork, BibTeX was all I needed... But I have made everything
> in LaTeX,unfortunately, not all people are willing to do the Right 
> Thing. ;)

I also use BibTeX for this.  You use a simple flat file database (read: 
a text file) that contains all the information about your 
citations/references.   Then  it can be used to generate references in 
all sorts of styles and orderings.  If you're using LaTeX, it also 
handles the actual linking of references from your main text to your 
bibliography in many different styles.  (Eg: [1] or (Oda, 2004) or 
whatever.)  And if the style you want isn't available, you can write 
your own, although I haven't sat down to figure out how hard that is 
yet.  There's a set of fields that it normally uses, but it doesn't 
complain if you add extra ones for your own reference (eg: I add urls, 
sometimes notes about where I found a book or who I borrowed it from, 
the dewey decimal number of each book so I can find it in the library, 
etc.).

It works best if you're doing your documents in LaTeX, but it can be 
made to work with other stuff -- you can generate reference lists in 
custom styles and export those lists to text or HTML, which you can 
then import to any word processor of your choice.

  Terri