LaTeX is not a word processor. It is a markup language just like HTML, RTF, etc. Most people don't know LaTeX. But, if you have gone to graduate school, you must have heard of it. If you majored in math or physics, you must have used it. In the following sections, I will give a brief introduction about LaTeX and discuss issues related to Biblioscape. If you have not heard of LaTeX and want to know more, please visit http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX.
The basic idea in LaTeX is to separate content from presentation. Sound familiar? This is what people want to do with XML. In a LaTeX file, you write like this:
\documentclass{article}
\title{My first article in class}
\begin{document}
Hello World!
\end{document}
When the file is sent to the publisher, it will be converted by macro packages to other formats like DVI, PostScript, and PDF, and be ready for printing. The font properties and layout of the article will be decided according to your publisher's specifications. You only need to worry about the content. If you are interested in experimenting with LaTeX, there are many well established LaTeX editors. Many of them are free. For example, you can download a good LaTeX editor at http://www.latexeditor.org.
Citation and bibliography support is an important part of LaTeX. A research paper or book cannot live without citing references. If you write with a LaTeX editor, you should put all your cited references in a separate BibTeX file. When you are ready to cite a reference in your LaTeX document, write "\cite{refKey}". The refKey is a string made of author and year, so the LaTeX processor can know which reference you are trying to cite in the BibTeX file. When you are done writing, the LaTeX engine will generate formatted citations and a bibliography according to the style you used.
What are left for Biblioscape to do
If you want to use Biblioscape to manage your reference collection and write in a LaTeX editor, there are two things Biblioscape needs to do well.
Generate temporary citation for LaTeX
Biblioscape already has a menu command to create a temporary citation for using in a LaTeX editor. Since there are not many Biblioscape users who need this command, it is not made available in the default menu system. To bring it out, you have to go to menu command "Tools | Customize..." to bring out the "Customize" window. Select the "Commands" tab and go to "Edit" in the "Categories:" list. Under the "Commands:" list on the right, find the command "Cite for LaTeX" and drag and drop it under the Biblioscape menu "Edit". To use this command, select the reference(s) you want to cite and click "Edit | Cite for LaTeX". Go to your LaTeX editor, put the cursor at the place you want to cite, and press Ctrl+V to paste text. The temporary citation will be pasted. For example, if the first author's last name of your reference is Giot and the publication year is 2003, the temporary citation will look like: "\cite{GIOT:2003:ID284}". The number 284 after ":ID" is the Reference ID. If you do not want "\cite" to be included, you can go to the "Tools | Options" window. On the "Format Manuscript" tab, remove "\cite" in the box "Cite for LaTeX prefix".
Export references in BibTeX format
When you cite for a paper in LaTeX, you have to prepare a BibTeX file that includes all the references cited in that paper. Exporting references as a BibTeX file is easy, but selecting the needed references to export could be a tedious job. Biblioscape solves this problem by letting you automatically tag a reference when it is cited in a LaTeX word processor. First, go to the Categories module and create a new category for the paper you are writing. For example, let's call it "my latex paper". Second, go to menu command "Tools | Options" window in Biblioscape. On the "Format Manuscript" tab, there is a section called "Citation Options". Under this section, select the checkbox "Tag records with selected category when copying temporary citations". Then, select the category "my latex paper" you just created. Now when you use the command "Cite for LaTeX", the category "my latex paper" will be automatically added to the reference selected. Once you have finished writing, go to the tab "Categories" on the tabs pane in the References module. Select the category "my latex paper", click the right mouse button, and select "Search". All the references cited for that paper will be retrieved. You can then go to menu command 'File | Export" and export these references as BibTeX file. You can then include this file with your LaTeX file for final processing using a LaTeX engine.
