a sente vs papers question

I'm debating whether to leave Papers and switch to Sente. I've had Papers for a while and have now downloaded a trial version of Sente to have a look at it.

Is there anyone here with long(ish) experience with Sente who can tell me how reliable it is as a cite while you write tool? I've played around with it myself, but I'm interested in hearing from people who have completed a full (or more) manuskript(s) using Sente. If you can compare the experience to Papers, even better.

Thanks.

 

Thanks, andy, I've read those links before and I agree it's the best review out there. He just didn't say all that much about the referencing part, so I didn't get the impression that he had actually worked through a whole publication with them. The devil is often in the detail when you get down to it (how to change upper cases to lower cases, change italics and indents and all of that fun stuff...).

But yes, I'll probably have to just fully test both. Please report back, and I'll do the same.

 

OK, I decided to give Sente a proper go, so I imported by entire research library. Here are my first impressions:

What I like:

I quite like the interface, even though reviews tend to favour Papers.

I REALLY like the tagging system, and this is something that I think will pull me quite strongly towards Sente. I have been trying to move away from folders and towards tagging as my means of orgnanisation, and Sente is just better set up for that than Papers. Papers also has tags, but they are not hierarchical. Sente makes it very easy for me to integrate special issues and book chapters and so on in the way that I like to have them organised.

Another thing I REALLY like are the sync features. That you can sync easily across multiple libraries and to iPad is just a great advantage to Papers. I haven't tested this out yet because in the trial version you can't sync if you have more than 250 references, but the reviews on this seem favourable.

I like the variety in ways you can import pdf files - just import them all in one batch, or filter and edit them as you go along. That's not an important issue, though, as Papers set up works pretty well for me, too.

What I'm not convinced about/ miss:

I miss the way Papers allows you to select or deselect multiple search engines when you try to match pdf-s to meta data. So far, I think I much prefer Papers' way of organising that process, because you can just insert and specify a bunch of meta data and then select the search engines you want. I haven't tested it out extensively with Sente yet, but it seems to me that you have to do one search engine at the time and you can't specify what the different pieces of text should be (author, publication year, and so on). I hope I just haven't figured it out properly yet. If I have, this process in Sente is pretty disappointing to me.

In Papers, it also seems to be easier to search on the web while having references side by side, but I haven't tested this extensively yet so this is just tentative.

Finally, I haven't found a way to differentiate between 'last import' and 'today' in recent imports in Sente. In Papers, you have this opportunity and I find it really useful when doing batch imports. I guess it's less important after you have set up the bulk of your research library, since additions after that are likely to be less numerous in quantity.

Another thing I'm missing is the 'open in Sente' plug in for web browser - but perhaps this exists and I haven't found it yet.

In short, I'm still on the fence. What frustrates me about both options is that they can only import meta data for journal articles, which creates tons of additional work in terms of cite while you write functionality. It's the one and only feature I desperately miss about EndNote. That program was near perfect in terms of importing correct metadata for all kinds of sources.


I guess I'm just asking for too much in one app, but in my dream world I would get:

- annotation capacities on par with iAnnotate
- import of meta data on par with EndNote
- seamless cite while you write functionality
- the tagging system of Sente
- seamless syncing across mac, windows and iPad


I'm still considering what I'll end up doing in the real world.

 

So, I thought I'd post a little update.

Theoretically, Sente has won me over. That's primarily because of the ability to organise my library around hierarchical tags, the instant sync between mac and iPad, and because it seems to handle book references better, partially because of the targeted browsing.

However, I've been having a lot of practical issues with Sente, much more than I would have liked to have in the course of two days.

After spending the time setting up my entire reserach library, Sente deleted all my quick tags palette after I set up a synced library (to sync to iPad). I was absolutely livid because I first thought my day and a half's work of organising all my files were gone. Turns out that the tags were still in the system but the palette had been erased, so once I found the tags I could restore the palette. However, based on their web site, at least one other user has experienced this issue.

I'm getting a lot of error messages regularly, and Sente has crashed on me twice. I think that's way too much in the course of two days. I'm in a dialogue with support to try to address it.

Finally, this morning I'm having sync issues, where the references I transferred to my desktop version last night are not showing up on my iPad.

In sum, I really want this to work, but I'm running out of patience. I think these are way too many issues to experience in two days. Perhaps I am demanding, but I expect apps in that price range to just work. This doesn't just work. It's being a pain in the butt.

As an update to my previous post, I've now established that
- Sente has no way of manually searching for duplicates
- you can't differentiate between last import and today's import
- there's no way to directly open a page in Safari in Sente

I'll miss those features in Papers, but they're not deal breakers. I'm getting accustomed to Sente's way of searching for new reference information and pdfs. I really like the targeted browsing, but I still prefer Papers UI when it comes to searching.

While some of the annotation features in the iPad version are quite nice, Papers and Sense are like toddlers compared to pdf annotation apps like iAnnotate, GoodReader or PDF Expert, so I will probably keep doing a lot of my annotation in iAnnotate, especially when I have to quickly go through a large number of documents. The lack of smooth scrolling and more advanced navigation options makes this a pain in the butt in both Sente and Papers on the iPad.

I'm still not sure that these apps are really worth the money, but I hope I'll be proven wrong.

 

OK, my final conclusion:

I have converted to Sente and will be using this as my main app to organise pdfs. The things that finally won me over from Papers are:
i) the sync feature between my Air and iPad (which now seems to be working fairly well)
ii) the quote function in the iPad annotation app. I allows for gathering notes to specific parts of the pdf text in one place, and I find that hugely useful. I still think the annotation app is missing in many other respects (as is the annotation in Papers), but this is an excellent feature.
iii) the ability to organise by tags.

I also prefer the user interface compared to that of Papers.

There are still things I'm not too happy with:
- I find that Sente isn't that good at identifying duplicates, and there's no way to search for duplicates manually (which I find weird)
- the iPad app is sometimes lagging when I scroll, and it tends to shut down when I delete attachments (this has happened close to ten times over the past three days, but I've stopped reporting problems to the developers though because they don't answer my posts)
- I'm not convinced yet (although I haven't fully tested it out) that it's a good cite while you write alternative, so I might be sticking to EndNote for now. It's by far the most reliable alternative I've tried for referencing documents.

I still think Papers is a good product, though.

Andy, have you decided what to buy?

 

Thanks, Rusty, I really appreciate hearing from someone with cite while you write-experience. I am actually trying to use Papers to write up a research article now (this started before I considered getting Sente; I initially went for Papers due to the cross platform functionality as my university is Windows based). I am still only halfway through the process or so, so I haven't really tested out the formatting of the bibliography, which IME is where it often goes wrong (and where EndNote is difficult to beat in terms of consistency). I agree, though, that magic manuscripts is great. I've used it with Scrivener and the ease with which to retrieve and insert references is excellent. Although I am currently using Sente for pdf reading, I will see this process (i.e. citing current article with Papers) to the end. At the end of the day, I could always use Papers for cite while you write and Sente for pdf management - it's easy to export a full library of references (minus the pdfs) between the two apps, and with Papers I would have cite while you write functionality on my windows work desktop (I have both versions of Papers already purchased).

It's also my experience that the Paper's support team is pretty responsive, although they for some reason no longer have public discussions on their support forum which I think is a shame. ThirdStreetSoftware was pretty responsive when I indicated that I was using the test version while considering to purchase, it was after purchase they became unresponsive

Do you sync across computers with dropbox?
And have you had any major formatting issues with Papers in terms of formatting references and bibliography in your texts?
Finally, could you expand a bit on the 'disaster' with Sente's cite while you write?

 

Thanks, Rusty, appreciate your input on this.

Yes, I feel the same about EndNote - everything but the meta data capacity seems so outdated... and from what I can work out, there are no plans of an iPad version, which to me is also a deal breaker.

Yes, your Sente experience sounds totally annoying. I guess I'll have to reconsider my plan for just transferring references to Papers. I'm encouraged by your reference experience there, though. At the same time, I'm not yet quite ready to give up on Sente for pdf management...

...

I guess I'll just have to have yet another think about how to organise my work flow.

 

To be honest, I think I took my mouth a bit too full with that comment, because I didn't actually check the quality of meta data for the references, and based on Rusty's post it's probably not as straight forward as I thought. I haven't really checked my Papers library properly, because at the moment I'm just using Sente (although I'm still testing out Papers for cite while you write for the article I'm currently writing, but I'm still in Scrivener drafting mode and haven't gotten to a stage where I've formatted references and bibliography). But I think the method I used was the same as the one described here for EndNote migration:

http://support.mekentosj.com/kb/how-to/migrating-your-references-to-and-from-endnote


I looked up Bookends' tag clouds and got pretty jealous - that looks GREAT. Do you have experience using Bookends? Do you know if it's correct that it doesn't do annotations?

 

Yes, I do the bold, too. The duplicates thing was primarily an issue when I was first migrating a large number of references; now that I'm just adding a few every day it's not a problem. My experience with 'look for duplicates on import' is that it doesn't work that well, though.

Yes, Papers also comes with its own browser and again it's not a big issue. I usually copy and paste a link from Safari to Sente as you describe. The 'open is Papers' add on was just a nice, convenient advantage, but definitely not a critical feature. I do use the clip to DevonThink (rather than 'print to') add on a lot - it's a great way for me to convert web page to pdf and organise them.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with Sente functionality. I greatly prefer the UI to Papers. I haven't tested the cite while you write functionality yet, but the ability to organise by tagging and 'sub tags' has greatly improved my pdf management. I also love the sync with my iPad, and the 'quote' feature in their annotations (although I generally think annotation features in both Sente and Papers need to be brought up one notch). I have to say, though, that I find Sente a bit buggy, and the customer service varied. But for now, it's still my first choice for pdf management.

 

Math, can I ask you: Is there a way of inserting two or more references at the same time with Sente? I realise you can do CMD and click to select more, but I often have three or more references together and they are usually never visible in the same window.

 

Thanks for all that input, appreciated!

That's pretty amazing. I haven't really thought through all the potential opportunities of this (only restricted, though, by the fact that I'm the only person in my neck of the woods who actually uses Sente, haha).

I can't really emphasise enough how much I second that. I just think it has the potential to be such a brilliant piece of software - but every time it shuts down on me because I'm deleting an attachment or something along those lines, I just get very frustrated.

Thanks, that helps. I hadn't thought of gathering them in a separate tag. It's a bit of a work around, but better than scrolling through a couple of thousand references.

I'm still set on completing my current article using Papers for the cite while you write functionality, primarily just because I started writing that piece and referencing it with Papers before I purchased Sente, but I also LOVE the ease with which Papers allows you to search and insert multiple references. It excels in that area compared to Sente. I'd also like to see the process through so I can subsequently compare it with Sente for cite while you write functionality. I used to want to have 'everything' in one app, but I'm increasingly accepting that it's better to diversify if that strengthens my overall work flow. I might end up using Sente for PDF management and annotation, and either Papers or EndNote for referencing.

What is your overall experience with reference formatting in Sente - do references display correctly and is it easy to modify citation styles depending on which journal you are submitting to?