Editing entries

By default, entries in Sixpack are locked. To edit an entry, you have to first unlock it. To do that, select the entry, and hit alt-enter, or click on the edit button, or toggle Edit->Edit reference in the menu.

Once an entry is unlocked, you will be in the entry window. You can move among fields using tab and shift-tab (sadly Sixpack currently will not move the field into view if tab selects a field that is outside the view. To move the field into view, use the page-up and page-down keys). Until the entry is locked again, you can not select a different entry from the list window. Once you finished editing the entry, lock it using alt-enter, or clicking on the lock button, or by toggling the Edit->Edit reference in the menu.

Fields in the entry window are coloured according to the bibtex definition: red for required fields, green for optional fields, and black for other fields. Sixpack will not force you to fill out all required fields, but bibtex will surely complain.

The CITEID

A special field is the CITEID field. Sixpack (currently) will not force you to have a CITEID in every entry. However, since CITEIDs are so important, you can ask Sixpack to generate the CITEID for you. The definition of what CITEIDs you want generated is stored in the configuration files.

To generate CITEID, select Edit->Make CITEIDs for reference(s) from the menu. If there are marked entries, CITEIDs will be generated for all marked entries. Otherwise a CITEID is generated for the current entry. Because entries just imported from a file are marked, you can easily generate CITEIDs for all newly imported entries.

How to define CITEID format

The format for CITEIDs is given in the configuration files (˜/.sixpack.rc, and /etc/sixpack.rc). The format is the following: add a line of the form

CITEID = format
   

to the configuration file. The format is given in this way: imagine you have to generate a CITEID for the following paper: Introduction to produce citeids for sixpack, G Lachmann and Z Bergstrom and Y Knot and X Moore, feb 1998, pages 1234. The format is the CITEID that you would create, and separate the fields with commas. (Sorry for the grammatical errors, I believe the were necessary.) Following are some possible CITEID formats:

CITEID = Lachmann,98
   

This would give CITEIDs of the form Lachmann98, which means last name of first author, and year in two-digit format. The first letter of last name should be in uppercase.

CITEID = LACHMANN,1998
   

This would give LACHMANN1998, i.e. last name of first author in uppercase, and year in 4-digit form.

CITEID = lachGEtal,98
   

This would give lachGEtal98. Here we use 4 first letters of last name of first author in lower case, then initials of first author in upper case, then other authors, using Etal for et.al if there are more than 2. For a total of 9 letters of the construction. Then year in 2-digit format.

CITEID = lacANDber,98
   

This would give 4 letters of the last name of each author in lowercase, separated by AND, for a total of 9 letters or less, and then year in 2-digit format.

Now for more complicated examples: (here we use the title, drop common words)

CITEID = LachG,98,feb,:,IntProCit
   

This would give Lach98feb:IntProCit. This is 4 letters of last name of first author, first letter uppercase, then initial of first author in uppercase. Then year in 2-digit format, then month lowercase using 3 letters. Then a colon, then the title by using 3 letters of each word first letter uppercase, and dropping common words, for a total of 3 words.

Another complicated one:

CITEID = GLach,98,feb,:,intrtoprod
   

First, initial of first author in uppercase, then 4 letters of last name of first author, first letter in uppercase. Then year in 2-digit format, then month, 3 letter lowercase, then colon, then words from the title, not dropping common words, 4 letters from each word in lowercase for a total of 3 words.

Complicated, isn't it? Luckily the program does the complicated part. You only have to provide the CITEID you would like to have.

One last part: in order to define which common words you would like to drop from the title, add a line of the following form to the configuration file:

TITLEIGNORE = the of from in on to a
   

i.e. words separated by spaces. To continue across lines use the backslash (the one going from left-up to bottom-right).