bibliography entry - reference format

[garethbird]

Hello

I've been looking through the forums, but I can't seem to find any help with this problem:

I can use the bibliography database and get it to more or less do as I want it to do, but for some reason, any bibliography entry I make is forced to be displayed in the main text in the same format. I have two specific help requests:

1. How do I remove the unnecessary square brackets [ ] from around the short name? eg if the short name is "Smith and Jones (2002), I would like it to appear in the text like:

"blah blah blah as discussed by Smith and Jones (2002)." instead of
"blah blah blah as discussed by [Smith and Jones (2002)]."

2. How do I make the inserted reference displayed in the main text be based on anything other than the short name field? Is the flexibility in formatting structure found in the bibliography table itself available in the reference that appears in the text? eg make it display something like:

[Au] " ("[Ye]")"

such that the 'Smith and Jones' part of the reference comes from the [Au] field and the '2002' part comes from the [Ye] field with the brackets or any other additional formatting I require being added into the displayed reference myself?

Many thanks!

[jrkrideau]

[garethbird]

Thanks for your help!

1) After a little searching I found it under the Index/Table tab of the Insert Index/Table box. Thanks.

2) I managed to follow the installation instuctions:

openofficeorg 2.1
python2.3.5
sqlite1.1.6 (the 'recommended' option although not the newest)
bibus1.3.0 (the latest version)

I don't understand what the UNO options are all about - all I know is that when enabled it throws all sorts of errors at me so I disabled them. The documentation for bibus:

http://bibus-biblio.sourceforge.net/bibus_doc/html/en/usingBibus.html

says:

Read mysql_config.txt to setup the database.

I didn't understand any of that .txt file. I installed sqlite simply because it was in the instuctions: I haven't the faintest idea what it is, how it compares to MySql, how to set up a database within it, or how to run it. There doesn't seem to be any basic documetation for XP users. Can anybody help? I really could use an idiot's guide! Thanks

[ftack]

The current version of Bibus on Windows comes with an installer: it should be quite easy to bget Bibus up and running nowadays (it used to be different). The full installer (Bibus - Win32-full-setup) should install all that is needed to run Bibus automatically.

The benefit of MySQL lies in a multi-user environment. You can install MySQL on a server, then all clients can connect to the same bibliographic database. SQLite in contrast even is not a program: it is just a file format that Bibus directly reads (thanks to the SQLite libraries). It is the simplest approach and thus recommended for a single user setup. The big advantage is that your data is in one file somewhere on your hard disk that can be easily copied for backup.

[jrkrideau]

[garethbird]

Thanks again for your help, but I still can't find any documentation on the actual use of Bibus! I *think* I have everything installed OK, but I can't be sure because the installation instructions are very much out of date and refer to very old versions of the files it tells you to install. However, once installed I think I have created the bibliography database I want and added a test reference to the database. But now I'm stuck. Do I need to somehow link the database to OOo? How is this done? Is this the reason for the error I get when I choose the 'insert a citation' option?:

Bibus Error
Cannot connect to Openoffice. See Documentation.
Cannot connect to Openoffice. See Documentation.
Connector : couldn't connect to pipe OOo_pipe(0))

What does this mean? How is this overcome? The error refers me to documentation that does not seem to exist!

Also:

[jrkrideau]