[OS X TeX] Re: Bibtex and non-ASCII characters

[Markus S]

On 2007-11-11 00:10:41 +0100, "Adam R. Maxwell" 
<amaxwell at mac.com> said:
> Well, "&" /is/ part of the ASCII character set.  It just needs to be  
> escaped in TeX.

You are right, to be precise: Non-ASCII caracters and ASCII characters 
that need to be escaped in TeX.
> 
>> Currently, I am sometimes replacing the & symbol with \& within  
>> Endnote, sometimes in the .bib file. Doing it always in Endnote  would 
>> be safer way but browsing Endnote this looks a bit odd.
>> 
>> My (planned) way out is to use a Perl script that converts all non- 
>> ASCII characters in the .bib file exported from Endnote so that  things 
>> work in Latex. I have the Perl script, the tough job is to  come up 
>> with a list of all characters that have to be replaced (and
> 
>> I first have to reverse all the characters I've already fixed within
> 
>> Endnote).
> 
> You could do this in BibDesk with regular expression find and replace
> or AppleScript, which may be easier than manipulating the .bib file  
> directly.  BibDesk also converts non-ASCII characters such as ø or ü   
> to the appropriate TeX sequence if you want (see the Files preference
> pane).

Yes, the Umlaut and accents are taken care of in BibDesk. It also 
ignores any environments put around stuff (like {} or \ce{CO2}) and 
only displays the characters itself (ie, CO2). But it only covers some 
stuff.

Take the & symbol, the degree sign, chemical formulas, the whole issue 
of protecting capital letters (eg, abbreviations) inside the 
fields.There is so much stuff that has to be hand-coded and if you are 
not very diligent about where you do it (GUI interface or .bib file), 
you are going to keep correctiong the same things over and over again.

My goal is to get the stuff from, eg, Web of Science, export it from 
Endnote into a folder with an attached folder action that takes care of 
everything.