                     xbiborg Version 0.1
		Copyright (c) 1998 Markus Wollgarten
                     wollgarten@iap.phys.ethz.ch

xbiborg is a small tool for manipulating bibliography files for the
bibtex program which is part of the LaTex typesetting software. 


COPYRIGHTS:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version. 
 
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details. 

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. 

The full text of the GNU General Public License is included in the
file GNU_GPL. 

xbiborg needs the xforms library. See the xforms distribution for its
particular copyright (http://bragg.phys.uwm.edu/xforms). 


OBTAINING xbiborg: 

You can find the most recent version of xbiborg at

http://www.iap.ethz.ch/users/wollgarten/xbiborg/index.html


INSTALLATION

See INSTALL file, please.


DESCRIPTION:

xbiborg is a small tool for manipulating bibliography files for the
bibtex program which is part of the LaTex typesetting software. 
xbiborg uses the xforms library.

Loading files 

After starting xbiborg the main and the message window show up and you
can load bib-files through the menu File->Load or create a new entry. 

xbiborg accounts for the usual syntax for .bib-files with the
following exception. 
Only curled braces ('{' and '}') are allowed as field delimiters. 
For example

YEAR = 1998 ,
or 
Author ="M. Wollgarten",

though in principle correct, will NOT work (this may be changed in a
later version).  
You have to use 

YEAR ={1998},
and
Author ={M. Wollgarten},
respectively.

Please check your files in this respect. By the way, "s, quotes, are
anyhow not recommended to avoid confusion with \"a,\"o etc. 

After loading, each entry is displayed with author(s), year and a
choosable field. Each record is kept in the memory with its original
file name. That means that you can load several files at the same time
without mixing them up (as long as you don't change the filename of a
record by editing). 
There are two buttons above the list of records. Using the left sort
button you can decide by which field the records shall be sorted. 

The button on the right lets you choose which field shall by displayed
in the second column of the list. 
The menu of possible fields comprises the standard fields
(annotate,address, author,...,year) plus field names which are not
BibTex conform and added by the user. I.e., you can have any
additional field like e.g. ABSTRACT, COPYAVAILABLE etc. 
In the present version it is not possible to add a new field while
running xbiborg. As a workaround edit one of your bib-files with any
editor and add the new field for one record. Upon loading this file
into xbiborg the new field is available for all loaded records. 
 

Editing files

The Edit menu provides several functions for listing the records. 

'List all' 	
lists all records (what a surprise),
'List selected'	
lists all records which have been previously selected,
'List not selected'	
lists all records which are presently not selected (I know you guessed
already). 

Selecting and deselecting can be done by the mouse. The Search
function will also select records in the list (see below). 
Selecting does not mean that you loose records. All records are kept
as long as you don't delete the record in the edit window. 

By selecting Edit->Edit the edit window of xbiborg shows up allowing
all field entries to be edited.  
With respect to the present record type (ARTICLE, BOOK etc.) the
labels of the input fields are coloured according to whether the field
is necessary (blue color) or optional (green color). Try this out by
changing the record type. (note, DIPLOMATHESIS is not a regular record
type but included since I need it). 

When pressing the UNDO button all changes are discarded. This works
only for the present record. I.e. after pressing the PREVIOUS, NEXT or
DONE button an undo is no longer possible. 

Pressing PREVIOUS goes back one record in the list of displayed
records. NEXT proceeds one record. DELETE deletes the actual
record. NEW creates a new record. COPY makes a copy of the actual
record.  

DONE closes the edit window. Note that xbiborg checks whether the
filename is valid, i.e. whether you have write access to the directory
given in the filename input field. If write access is not given
xbiborg focuses on the filename field and will not proceed unless you
provide a valid filename.  

Choosing Edit->Set Fields allows you to set the content of a given
field for all records presently displayed. 

The SEARCH button opens the search window of xbiborg. Here you can
choose which field(s) is/are to be search for a given string of
characters. Checking "case sensitive search" compares case
sensitive. If "literal..." is checked xbiborg does not remove all
non-alphanumerical characters. By default these characters like
"$%&/()<>=?{[]} are removed. Keep this in mind while search for
strings that contain LaTeX commands. 

The records which are found by the search are mark in the main
window. Use Edit->List selected and Edit->List-non-selected to
performe logical operations OR,AND and NOT. 


COMMENTS and BUGS

Please send your comments and bug reports to
wollgarten@iap.phys.ethz.ch.


Zrich, October 1998


