On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 6:13 AM, Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> wrote:

Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen@damtp.cam.ac.uk> writes:

>> Agreed. Google Scholar citations need very close proofreading, as they
>> can be erroneous or poorly formatted.
>
> Thanks Matt - I'd agree with this, having seen oddities from google
> scholar. I emailed them ages ago about one problem (formatting of
> initials in author names), but never heard back... it is a pity that
> there is no mechanism for tidying up their references, as it seems to be
> the best thing out there that covers all the fields.
>
> Having said that, if google scholar can save me some typing, I'll
> happilyuse it as a starting point for a bibtex entry. I've just started
> using pdfmeat -- this is nice, as given a pdf, it outputs the
> corresponding bibtex entry from google scholar. Probably works similar
> to the way zotero does it, but can be used straight from the command
> line:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/pdfmeat/
>

Thanks for the link! That looks like a useful tool.

>> accessed by bibsnarf are limited to math and sciences. Since I use
>> biblatex together with the Chicago Manual of Style, any bibtex entry I
>> clip has to be edited and tweaked substantially. (Indeed, manual editing
>> is unavoidable when using biblatex.)
>
> If its not too tangential, why do you use biblatex -- is it the future
> for bibtex?

I use biblatex because I use citation styles in the humanities
(especially the Chicago Manual of Style). Biblatex and the chicago-notes
package (both now part of TeXLive) handle Chicago Style footnotes and
bibliographies beautifully, with an astounding number of options and
flawless formatting -- but the bibtex entries are a bit fussier than
standard bibtex.

Best,
Matt