Posts Tagged: writing

Hacks / Noticed / Research / Software — 1 Comment
20
Feb 09

BibTex and Word Documents

Via Academic Productivity, I’ve been looking for this forever:

BibTex4Word is an add-in for Microsoft Word that allows the citation of references from a BibTex database. BibTex4Word will insert a bibliography into your document using your choice formatting style.

It is intended for three types of user:

1. LateX users who need to use Microsoft Word. BibTex4Word allows you to use your existing BibTex database and favourite bibliography style.

2. Word users who can’t afford a commercial bibliography package but need to insert citations and bibliographies into their documents. Everything you need to manage references is available free.

3. Word users who have a commercial bibliography package but who don’t like it. BibTex4Word is lightweight, transparent and doesn’t mess up your documents. It is also free.

I’m completely married to Bibdesk as my reference manager, but the lack of Word integration has always caused headaches.  I’m very excited to have found an answer.

Noticed / Research / Software — No Comments
28
Jan 09

Steven Johnson on Research and Writing

Erik Marshall points to an essay by Steven Johnson on his research and writing techniques.  Steven is a brilliant writer; it is interesting and humanizing to see the extent to which he uses technology.  I use BibDesk is a manner similar to how Johnson uses Devonthink, but I think I would benefit from the more unstructured approach in Devonthink.  Any readers use it?

The first stage, which is crucial, is a completely disorganized capture of every little snippet of text that seems vaguely interesting. I grab paragraphs from web pages, from digital books, and transcribe pages from printed text — and each little snippet I just drop into Devonthink with no organization other than a citation of where it came from. This goes on for months and months; I read in a completely unplanned and exploratory way (increasingly online, thanks to Google Books and other sources) and just drag anything that seems at all interesting into Devonthink.

….in the last stage before I actually start writing, I create a little folder in Devonthink for each of the chapters. And then I sit down and read through every single little snippet that I’ve uncovered over the past year or so of research. And as I’m reading them on the screen, I just drag them into the chapter folder where I think they will be most useful. Some snippets get dragged to multiple folders; most don’t make it into any folder. But I read through them all, and in reading through them all, I have a completely new contextual experience of them, because I’m at the end of the research cycle, not at the beginning. They feel like pieces of a puzzle that’s coming together, instead of hints or hunches.

Read the full article: DIY: How to write a book – Boing Boing.

Hacks / Thoughts — 23 Comments
17
Jan 08

Development Approaches to Writing?

I know that many of my readers have tackled large writing projects (books, dissertations, etc.), so I’m hoping you can help me out. As I begin my thesis, I can’t help but look at it as somewhat of a software development project. While the creative process is different, the machinations are similar: I’ll be adding or editing lines (of text) and referencing objects (citations), and I’ll be stylizing and formatting the material. It’s a development process, with different content.

Here’s the problem I face. With software development, I use version control and project management software (Trac), I’ve got multiple backups on different machines, I’ve got builds, tests, etc. With writing, I’ve got a binary file that just keeps getting bigger each day. I don’t have an automatic way of seeing multiple versions, I don’t have software that lets me see the changes between checkins, so on and so forth. This is what I’d generally think of as lacking a “sane” development environment, and it is worrying.

A quick note about my writing flow. For a number of reasons, I do most of my writing in Word. My final document is often processed in LaTeX, but the actual writing and saving parts are done in Word. The problem with this is the writing process is a black box; I can’t see what changes I’ve made every day, I don’t have sane merges, etc. I suppose I could have a semblance of this functionality if I just saved a new copy of the document each day, but the idea of searching through 50 copies of a document to figure out what day I added that part and what I was thinking is just nuts, especially when I compare it to the heads-up display I get with Trac.

I’m willing to adopt a new word processor, I’m willing to write a bunch of scripts that will manage a build process. On the other hand, I’m not willing to write my dissertation in TextEdit (which I suppose is the only real answer if I want to follow a development method, sigh). But since I am new at this, I figure there are some tools or tricks that I’m missing. What I’m looking for is sane versioning, integration with SVN a major plus (this would enable me to Trac my project), maybe some advice on methods or tools that have worked for you. My hope is that this post will help others who stumble upon it, so please consider leaving a comment about what worked for you, etc. Thank you!