onSave actions discussion #131

[stefan-kolb]

Will replace all ordinal numbers by superscripts when saving a database, e.g. 1st Conf. -> 1\textsuperscript{st} Conf.
Will not alter the casing of the text at the moment, should we do this? E.g. 1ST Conf. -> 1st Conf.

[oscargus]

"but the use of the superscript form seemed to have disappeared around the 1940s and 50s — until its corpse was reanimated by Microsoft." ;-)

[stefan-kolb]

We thought it looks way better than without.

[oscargus]

I do not really have a strong opinion on it, just found a quote from someone that does. I tend to remove ordinal numbers from conference names anyway (using strings to get consistent naming).

(There are similar behaviors in other Latin languages, Italian and French at least, so maybe one should try and support that as well?)

[koppor]

I generally like the idea to be more pushy towards correct bibtex files.

If we really go towards that direction, could you remove the CleanUp functionality from the CleanUp dialog? It is not necessary there any more! (See screenshot below)

Does the RegEx obey enclosing in brackets ({1st}) or don't wee need that and force users to do the right thing?

The issue that I see, that we have to check all exporters (and the OpenOffice integration) whether they export \textsuperscript correctly. Furthermore, having my .bib file polluted with TeX commands is not appealing to me. We should change our cell renderers to render/remove the LaTeX commands.

Is this a discussion concerning: #160?

CleanUp dialog:

[stefan-kolb]

Thanks for input @koppor 👍

• I left the CleanupAction as is intentionally, but i can remove rewritten cleanups.
• Brackets will cause problems, need to recheck this, thanks!
• Exporters may have problems with that, but if that's true that issue already existed before

I'm not sure if we should hide this information from the user by removing LaTex commands from the cell renderer. I don't see a possibility to not "pollute" the bib file with necessary LaTex commands.

Open for further discussion 😄

[koppor]

If we have configurable save actions (as eclipse), we should keep it in the CleanUp diag. If don't, what's the benefit? The entry is always updated.

I'm not sure about the users acceptance though... Don't know, how many will complain and ask for configuration options...

[stefan-kolb]

Yeah we need to discuss this, I think #131 should have consensus, but this one might have different opinions.

[simonharrer]

I think we should make save actions that alter the .bib file configurable via preferences. And I would not remove them from the cleanup actions either. I propose to only set them to active by default.

[koppor]

👍 for configuration options and keeping the CleanUp as is.

@stefan-kolb The code in CleanUp seems to differ from your new code: Could you modify the CleanUp dialog to use your code?

[stefan-kolb]

I would remove the cleanup dialog and handle all that stuff in a preferences autocleanup section. If someone modifies this, it'll be run instantly and act like the old auto cleanup?! Anyway, it will always be run as onSave action.

[koppor]

👎 for removing the cleanup dialog. I'm used to having control on my entries and see what happens. We currently have the issue with the JabRef code changing (indent etc) due to the autosave without wanting to have these changes.

For instance, I'm against performing following changes:

• auto bracketing is IMHO not working for BPMN, but I have to recheck. Also moving the DOIs around does not make sense if users are forced to use a certain bst showing the URL field and not the DOI field.
• PDF file renaming would cause many troubles. I do not want that JabRef renames my PDFs without asking.
• Making the path relative: I think, some use cases are not covered here
• Convert to biblatex format: Not sure if we want that really happening automatically
• I really like Unicode and would propose to store everything in UTF-8. However, not all users are Unicode ready and like the LaTeX encoding more.

I think, IntelliJ also doesn't have save actions, does it? Would you use it if they were there? Always changing your code?

[matthiasgeiger]

I think the best way is to have a set of defined "clean up" actions which a) can be triggered manually, b) are performed automatically when saving, c) are performed automatically when a bib file is opend/entries are imported.

So the cleanup actions should only implemented once but can be triggered in different ways. And yes, the automatic transformations should be configurable in the preferences.

[koppor]

👍 for these options. Especially c) is really useful.

[stefan-kolb]

Ok, I agree with your thoughts. We can close this PR, as the code changes will be made incremently in the direction that was pointed out here.