It is simply a database for your paper references, but it will store
the PDF with each reference. Makes them easy to find, and with the
several methods available, easy to add to your latex document you
are writing.
If someone has used both extensively, I would love to hear about the
potential superiority of Papers over BibDesk, but for now, I am
quite content...
As one of the BibDesk developers, it's always nice to hear from a
happy user!
Frankly, I've been a little puzzled by the Papers buzz, since the
features people seem most excited about are ones that I've been using
in BibDesk for some time, so I'm interested in hearing people's
thoughts about this. BibDesk being free, this interest is academic
rather than profit-driven, and I don't want to incite the equivalent
of an editor flamewar ;).
My own idea is that people have a tendency to dismiss BibDesk because
of the LaTeX/BibTeX association, and because they just don't realize
that it allows you to organize files like iTunes/iPhoto...and it also
allows you to search them by content or associated (user-entered)
metadata and notes (and this is not limited to PDF; you can attach PS,
DVI, HTML, RTF, TIFF, OmniOutliner, or whatever). Individual
references also appear in Spotlight searches, which can be convenient.
In addition, you can import and export a variety of file formats, and
BibDesk also has extensive scripting support. We recently added the
ability to search PubMed and z39.50 servers, as well as use scripts or
URLs as data sources, and of course web/text import has been present
for a long time.
Unfortunately, we aren't good at advertising, and there are too many
features to advertise (which is a problem in itself). People have
asked for built-in PDF viewing and annotation for BibDesk, but we
think that should be a separate application; we're actually working on
this, and it's in BibDesk's subversion repository for the time being.
Just to be clear: I think Papers is a nice looking application, and
it has the advantage of focusing on a specific set of user and
developer priorities (as far as I can tell). It looks like it will do
really well, and it's great that the developers are meeting a need for
people!
regards,
Adam
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