I used BibTeX/LaTeX to write my PhD thesis in a scientific field, with the Xemacs package to manage my entries. My wife wrote her PhD thesis in literature using EndNote/WordPerfect.
For some purposes, BibTeX is certainly is adequate. However, even if you are just adding and searching entries, it is closer to programming than to a user-friendly application. Here are just a few of the problems for a computer-non-expert: the changes to capitalization it does automatically (what, I need to say '{A}merica' to not get 'america'?), the funny-looking ways to enter accents, and the difficulty to debug if an entry is in the wrong format. Then, just imagine a non-progammer trying to change a citation format slightly.... Likewise, to most non-programmers, LaTeX looks like a step back to the dark ages, and since BibTeX requires the use of LaTeX, it's awfully hard to convince humanities scholars to use it. And of course, the journals would have no idea how to handle LaTeX code.
EndNote is our primary example of why we still mostly use Windows instead of Linux. I would love to see Niles port EndNote or to have someone else develop a product as easy to use.
Just today encountered the following (possible) deficiency with man pages.
There exists a package of programs for producing maps and charts in PostScript using an entirely command-line interface (GMT). Currently, the package is installed by default as a number of executables, along with man pages for each. However, it was recently discovered that the names of the executables conflict with other names of executables in another package.
One proposed solution was to change the interface so that every command is instead run as "gmt cmdname options" (like CVS). The immediate deficiency with this is that how to organize man pages is no longer obvious (the man page for each command was already quite long enough---we don't want a huge result to "man gmt"). Leaving the man pages the way they are is not an option---the names could still conflict with man pages for other packages. This is, of course, easily solved by info or HTML.
Slashdot Mirror
For some purposes, BibTeX is certainly is adequate. However, even if you are just adding and searching entries, it is closer to programming than to a user-friendly application. Here are just a few of the problems for a computer-non-expert: the changes to capitalization it does automatically (what, I need to say '{A}merica' to not get 'america'?), the funny-looking ways to enter accents, and the difficulty to debug if an entry is in the wrong format. Then, just imagine a non-progammer trying to change a citation format slightly.... Likewise, to most non-programmers, LaTeX looks like a step back to the dark ages, and since BibTeX requires the use of LaTeX, it's awfully hard to convince humanities scholars to use it. And of course, the journals would have no idea how to handle LaTeX code.
EndNote is our primary example of why we still mostly use Windows instead of Linux. I would love to see Niles port EndNote or to have someone else develop a product as easy to use.
There exists a package of programs for producing maps and charts in PostScript using an entirely command-line interface (GMT). Currently, the package is installed by default as a number of executables, along with man pages for each. However, it was recently discovered that the names of the executables conflict with other names of executables in another package.
One proposed solution was to change the interface so that every command is instead run as "gmt cmdname options" (like CVS). The immediate deficiency with this is that how to organize man pages is no longer obvious (the man page for each command was already quite long enough---we don't want a huge result to "man gmt"). Leaving the man pages the way they are is not an option---the names could still conflict with man pages for other packages. This is, of course, easily solved by info or HTML.
Any alternative solutions?