[libreoffice-users] Re: How to abbreviate the first name of the author?

Am 12.07.2011, 10:48 Uhr, schrieb Dietrich Bollmann  
<dietrich@formgames.org>:

> Hi,
>
> for a paper I have to only render the Initials of the first name in the
> list of references:
>
>   At the place of:  Anderson, David
>   I have to use:    Anderson, D.

The only practical way I've found is changing the database. If you do  
that, it might be a good idea to put first, last names and initials in  
separate fields in the literature database, although that will mean  
editing the database and inserting three new keys (last name, first name,  
first name initial -- and that possibly for several authors? ... might  
become painful).
The advantage would be that you'll be able to have any combination of  
those in the literature index later. The limitation is, though, that you  
won't be able to make use of any custom fields in the database unless you  
link them to some of the standard keys. You have five "user fields" that  
could be used, or maybe there are other keys you don't need, but at this  
pint the whole strategy becomes an ugly hackjob.

So maybe you should decide for yourself whether this is actually going to  
be worth it or whether to have a separate database for differently spelled  
author names ...


Regarding the copy/paste problem: I've just tried around a bit, and this  
worked for me:
- open the literature .odb file ind LO base
- go to "tables" and right-click on the data table (don't open it!). It's  
probably called "biblio".
- select "copy"
- open a new spreadsheet in calc, ctrl+v, there you go.

About getting the results backinto the DB: I haven't tried if that would  
work the same way, because right now I'm too afraid to mess up my own  
literature database ...
The worst case would be copy/pasting the contents of the single fields  
back by hand.

After changing the database, it is necessary to update your document, too.  
Usually writer will make a copy of a record in the database when you  
insert a citation. One way I found to change existing entries is to insert  
the changed entries into the document from the database. Writer will then  
ask whether it should update the other entries using the same key, and if  
you say yes, it will. If you accidentally click "no", you'll create a  
second entry for the changed dataset. You should avoid that!

Hope this helps somewhat,

  Zak


P.S.: The more I think about this, the more I think moving to a proper 3rd  
party solution might be a good idea. I'm just not sure wether an external  
tool will be able to dynamically update the literature list with the  
contents of the document and so on.


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