Two-way Compatibility with BibDesk

[foice]

In the most recent version (5.13) it has been added import support for groups when reading a .bib file from BibDesk. That is great. Now that the two programs both can handle groups it would be awesome to be able to go back and forth from BibDesk to Jabref.

To this end I see two issues need to be fixed still

1. JabRef does not create a field "date-modified" nor a filed "date-added", that is standard for Bibdesk. This is a very minor thing, but breaks (very commonly used) visualizazion by date in BibDesk. I suggest to start adding such fields in JabRef too.
2. Items added to Groups imported from BbDesk in Jabref are not saved in the equivalent BibDesk string of the .bib. Therefore if one opens the file again in BibDesk the new members of the group are missing. This seems a quite simple addition to how Jabref handles the groups which I would like to suggest so to make JabRef two-way compatible with BibDesk.

[Siedlerchr]

Thanks for the feedback! 1) JabRef has two fields for this as well: This looks then like this

@Article{,
  author           = {test},
  creationdate     = {2024-04-21T18:25:51},
  modificationdate = {2024-04-21T18:25:52},
}

2) I would suggest first creating an export "Bib desk bib format" for this as the step to verify and test the group creation If this works as expected, one can integrate this with an additional save option here "Save groups as bib desk groups"

[koppor]

We had the discussion at https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/130. I voted for dated-added at https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/130#issuecomment-753661110. At the code at https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/2b5fddd23206d25f6413707416f7b59188303496/src/main/java/org/jabref/logic/cleanup/TimeStampToCreationDate.java#L22-L23, "date-modified" is still mentioned.

I think, we opted for creationdate and modificationdate, because

Note that dates in biblatex always ends on date, like eventdate, urldate or origdate. The reason for this convention is that biblatex automatically parses these dates and provides virtual fields containing the information like eventmonth or eventyear. See \DeclareLabeldate command.

Source: https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/130#issuecomment-234946584

We did not create any ADR for our decision. We should do it. :)

What is more important? BibDesk compatibility or biblatex compatibility? Currently, I think, more BibDesk compatibility, because the date field handling for creation and modification is less often used.

This issue also refs https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/10370, but we cannot do much currently.

[koppor]

Flagged "DevCall" to refine the issue.

[foice]

Thanks for chiming in. Yes, an export format can be a good way to test it. In the long run one wants to have that field to be created automatically so that BibDesk timestamps format is automatically satisfied.

[koppor]

Some (somewhat internal) notes of us: https://pad.riseup.net/p/JX_CKKb99QmxeNBxpHob

[koppor]

We added follow-up issues for groups:

• https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/11318
• https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/11319
• https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/11320
• https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/11321

---

• For groups reading and writing, we use this issue
• For dates, I will take care and move JabRef in the direction to read/write BibDesk date fields in future versions while respecting "old" timestamp format (and not just modify them)