Endnote, Bookends, Sente, Zotero, oh my

I'm a long-time Sente user, and based on previous discussions on TidBITS Talk, I suspect a number of us will chime in here.

Sente has been great for quite a while, and the most recent major update resolved my only remaining complaints. Now the program finds citations easily, re-names and stores PDF files in a user-defined way, and works beautifully with keywords and filters. The new version has an integrated web browser, which makes jumping through authentication hoops easy, and makes downloading PDFs from the web straightforward. A new Quick Find feature means that when a colleague emails me a PDF, I simply drop it into Sente and the program automatically finds the full reference information from PubMed, links in the PDF and manages the file naming and storage. Bibliographies are perfect, I use Mellel which has tight integration with Sente, but Word and BibTex are also well integrated.

Sente may cost more than competitors, I'm unsure. Since research is central to my work, and since I get academic pricing, the cost wasn't really an issue. Sente's developers are very active and engaged on the Sente forums, and updates are regular and targeted -- this is worth a lot.

The one area that could be improved is the search dialog for PubMed searching. It's a bit fiddly, and search results are displayed in a saved search library rather than in a temporary separate window. This has pros and cons, and once you're used to it is a minor issue at most.

Sente doesn't have facilities for reading PDFs within the program (in opens them in Preview), and the note-taking facilities are very basic -- a text field into which you enter notes. But for finding references and managing a PDF library, I think it's the best program available.

On 17/07/2008 11:58 PM, "Ashish Ranpura" <buddhaheadranpura.com> spake
thus:

> Bibliographies are perfect, I use Mellel which has tight integration with
> Sente, but Word and BibTex are also well integrated.

Hm. I just tried the demo yesterday and I'm less than impressed with it's
BibTeX import. I imported my nearly 1200-entry reference list, and there's a
whole bunch with various errors such as blank titles, incorrect publication
types (e.g., conference proceedings being categorised as journal articles),
etc. BibTeX import should be easy and is something that I would expect
commercial software to get right. It's also something I need as a lot of my
references come in BibTeX form.

Sente looks like a very nice program that I might consider using, but I
don't have time to do major cleanup work after import. Maybe I'll have a
chat to the developers about it.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

Nigel,

Please do submit your BibTeX file to us (Third Street Software, the maker of Sente) along with any notes about particular references that you think were mishandled. We always investigate reports like this to see if there are problem in the Sente importer. Please use our support at thirdstreetsoftware dot com address.

Michael