Documentation
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User Guide
Advanced Features
Handling References
The Reference Database
The Reference Database
The Syntax of Entries
The Database.m file consists of a sequence of entries, each containing information about a single reference. Each entry in the database has the following form.
{key, name1 
value1, name2 value2, ...}
Here key is the key associated with the reference; name is a particular piece of data such as the last name of an author, the title of an article, or the name of a journal; and value is the value of that piece of data.
For example, here is what a typical entry in a reference database looks like.
{"Sander99",
"RefType" "Periodical",
"Author1FN" "A",
"Author1MN" "A",
"Author1LN" "Sanderfoot",
"Author2FN" "N",
"Author2MN" "",
"Author2LN" "Raikhel",
"Title" "The specificity of vesicle trafficking: coat proteins and
SNAREs",
"JournalTitle" "Plant Cell",
"Day" "",
"Month" "",
"Year" "1999",
"JournalVolume" "11",
"JournalNumber" "",
"FirstPage" "629",
"LastPage" "642",
"URL" "",
"Notes" ""}
The first item in the list, Sander99, is the keyword associated with the reference. All other items in the list define the values for specific types of information about the reference. For example, RefType specifies the type of reference. In this case the RefType is set to Periodical. Some other types of data whose value is specified in this entry are listed below.
• Author1FN - the first name of the first author
• Author1MN - the middle name of the first author
• Author1LN - the last name of the first author
• Title - the title of the article
• JournalTitle - the title of the journal in which the article occurs
• JournalVolume - the volume number of the journal in which the article occurs
• Year - the year of publication
• FirstPage - the starting page number of the article
• LastPage - the ending page number of the article
Each of these data items correspond to the text fields in the dialog box for setting up a Periodical reference. Notice that unfilled text fields in the dialog box are listed in the database entry with a blank string as their value.
Here is an example of an entry in the reference database that describes a book. The data items in the entry correspond to the text fields in the dialog box for setting up a Book reference.
{"Lay",
"RefType" "Book",
"Author1FN" "David",
"Author1MN" "C",
"Author1LN" "Lay",
"BookTitle" "Linear Algebra and its Applications",
"Year" "2003",
"Publisher" "Addison Wesley",
"City" "Boston",
"State" "MA",
"Country" "USA",
"FirstPage" "",
"LastPage" "",
"ReviewVolume" "99",
"ReviewNumber" "537",
"URL" "",
"Notes" ""}
