Tips and Tricks

From BibDeskWiki

Hidden Preferences

BibDesk has a few advanced preferences that are not accessible through the UI. Some of these are intended for debugging, while others may be features that aren't ready for public consumption, or shouldn't need to be changed in general usage. Some are described in the manual (http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/manual). You can set these from the command line in Terminal.app. To change these preferences, make sure you quit BibDesk, open Terminal.app, type the defaults command with the appropriate arguments, and hit Enter. Typically, the command and arguments look like this:

defaults write -app BibDesk <Key> -<type> <value>

If this fails with the message "Couldn't find an application named "BibDesk"; defaults unchanged", you can use

defaults write edu.ucsd.cs.mmccrack.bibdesk <Key> -<type> <value>

The hidden preferences are as follows:

Preference Key:                             Type:    Default Value:  Note:
BDSKRemoveExtendedAttributesFromDocuments   bool     false
BDSKDisableDocumentExtendedAttributes       bool     false
BDSKDisableExportAttributes                 bool     false
BDSKFieldsToWriteIfEmpty                    array    ()
BDSKShouldUseSpotlightCommentForURL         bool     false
BDSKDisableRemoteChangeNotifications        bool     false
BDSKSharingServerMaxConnections             integer  0               Ignored if < 20
BDSKDisableTypeAheadSelection               bool     false
BDSKDisableBackgroundColorForGroupTable     bool     false
BDSKScriptMenuDisabled                      bool     false
BDSKAnnoteFieldName                         string   -
BDSKDefaultAnimationTimeInterval            float    0.15            Set to zero to disable
BDSKTableHeaderImages                       dict     -
BDSKTableHeaderTitles                       dict     -
BDSKGroupFieldSeparatorCharactersKey        string   ";:,"
BDSKDefaultGroupFieldSeparatorKey           string   "; "            Note trailing space
BDSKShouldShowWebGroup                      bool     true
BDSKEditorFormShouldAutoCompleteKey         bool     true
BDSKReadExtendedAttributesKey               bool     false           Read/write BibTeX when dragging/dropping files
BDSKShouldUsePDFMetadata                    bool     false           Reads standard PDF info
BDSKShouldWritePDFMetadata                  bool     false           Writes standard PDF info
BDSKAddISIXMLStringToAnnote                 bool     false
BDSKDisableISITitleCasing                   bool     false
BDSKDefaultArrayJoinString                  string   "/"             Used by componentsJoinedByDefaultJoinString
BDSKShouldUsePubMedMetadata                 bool     true            Treat filename as possible PubMed ID
FVWebIconDisabled                           bool     false

For dictionaries and arrays you can use -dict-add and -array-add as well, as in

defaults write -app BibDesk BDSKTableHeaderImages -dict-add Citeseerurl "/Users/YourName/Library/Application Support/BibDesk/CiteSeer.png"

To revert a hidden preference to its default, type this in Terminal.app:

 defaults delete -app BibDesk <Key>