[OS X TeX] bibdesk 1.1

[Adam R. Maxwell]

Hello Michael,

On Jun 8, 2005, at 22:55, Michael Gedalin wrote:

> The following is produced by downloading from the adsabs abstract  
> service:
>
> @ARTICLE{2004JGRA..10903106G,
>    author = {{Gedalin}, M. and {Balikhin}, M.},
[...]
> }
>
>
> After Saving As from Bibdesk 1.1 I get the following:
>
> @article{2004JGRA..10903106G,
>     Adsnote = {Provided by the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data  
> System},
[...]
> }
>
> and the bib file becomes not portable: the first one is properly  
> opened by the corresponding software on a PC (Windows), the latter  
> does not show most of the fields.
> Is there any reason why Bibdesk changes the order of the fields in  
> the bib file ? (It is the order which makes the file not portable.)

I believe we change the order of the fields so that it's  
deterministic, and you have a guaranteed order (alphabetized) when  
adding new fields.  This makes diffs in CVS easier.  Since BibTeX  
itself doesn't care about the order of the fields (unless we've  
missed something for the last few years), this is acceptable and  
portable.

What software are you using that doesn't recognize this?  JabRef  
should work fine, for instance.

Adam

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