In earlier versions of JabRef I could easily edit and use my BibTex entries in my latex files. Now, there are fields that are incorrectly named and ignore anything I try to enter. I have tried to fix things but it seems hopless. Why is this new version causing so many problems for me? Earlier versions were great – easy to use and reliable. It is now almost useless to me. Perhaps you can prepare an older version that will accept my older BibTex files. Before you ask for donations I suggest that you take care of fixing the problems that you have introduced in these “JabRef updates”, or perhaps use/hire some programmers that understand how JabRef should work with BibTex files. It took me over 10 years to create my BibTex files that are now unacceptable to the latest version – what a waste
Also, where can I get a sample of a BibTex file that actually works with vers. 5.1? This file should contain a good coverage of the different types of references that this version should handle. Your test suite would probably be sufficient! I have (tried to do so) attached 3 PNG files that illustrate just one of the problems that I have experienced with 5.1. Note, no matter what I enter in the Number Field it is never shown in the display of the reference; but, it is shown in the BibTex Source Field.JabRef_5.1_NumberField_2020-11-06|690x345
And I could only attach one of the 3 files that could be useful for understanding this problem
First of all thanks for using JabRef and sorry for the inconvenice you encountered.
Please keep in mind that all developers of JabRef are contributing in their free time for JabRef and we don’t get paid for development.
Our many thankful users that have been and are using JabRef and are also donating help us to keep us motivated. JabRef is and will continue to be OpenSource and free software.
Actually, your problem has nothing to do with the bibtex format or an older version of JabRef.
You are refering to the preview style.The preview style can be customized by the user to adjust which fields are shown. In your case you would need to modify the line where you want to show the field.
Go to Preferences -> Entry preview -> Preview (or Customized Preview style) -> Edit:
Replace the line that starts with: \begin{year}
Thank you so much for your great suggestion. I am very unsure how “hire” works. Can you explain it to me please? You can also send me a private message.
I am too dumb to see all three PNGs. I only see one.
May I ask for support of you? I am a bit disabled in understanding your issues. Would you mind to write one post per issue? Then, I can think of it. Handling three different issues in parallel is really to much for me.
I have asked my family if it is OK to spend some of my family time to your issues. They very like “Birdy”. Thus, they allowed me to so. They also support me to ask for some other presentation of the issue.
Ok Oliver,
Thank you for the testjabref.bib – I will test it myself.
I would be glad to help you; but my time available for help with JabRef is limited.
I am now entering manually some references that I need for some manuscripts that I am working with — this takes a lot of my time
Is it possible that I could install an older version of JabRef and use it with some older *.bib files that was compatible with these older *.bib files?
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I have installed two different versions of JabRef (4.3.1 and 5.1). I already have the latest SIAM guide to using Siam’s LaTeX Style (docsiamart.tex) and reference.bib which you can get at https://archive.siam.org/journals/auth-info.php . I loaded reference.bib into both JabRef versions and looked at how the same entries were displayed. I suggest that you do the same and then get back to me on what differences you observe. Hopefully you can provide some details about why they are different. You might also compile docsiamart.tex (e.g. with TexMaker) with the reference.bib in the same folder, and see how it looks in practice (esp. the URL references). It might also be useful to look at: https://archive.siam.org/journals/pdf/stylemanual.pdf
Christoph, your patch for the number field did not work as you told me it should. Here is what you gave me to use (replacement):
\begin{year}\year\end{year}\begin{volume}, \volume\end{volume}, \begin{number},\number\end{number} \begin{pages}, \format[FormatPagesForHTML]{\pages} \end{pages}
Of course this is obvious. But, as you should be aware that I can only attach one file to a message it is somewhat awkward to send the before and after images unless they are merged into a single file. Here is the after “entering a number in the number field”. Again, your patch that you sent earlier does not work IMHO. I am open to other suggestions on this issue and I would like to know how one can use “Other fields” in 5.1.
I give up on this forum -- I thought the developers could provide the help I need; but, alas I was wrong. I have wasted too much of my time and the time of Christoph and Oliver. I will try to create a small python program that will modify my BibTex files (over 1200 entries) to be compatible with 5.1 and/or 5.2. I hope that others who have older versions of JabRef will be more careful than I, before they upgrade
@virsto Ok took a while, but we fixed the entry preview for entry type “article”. There were some inconsistencies involving the number, issue, eid and pages fields.
In short: There are different standards (BibTeX, Biblatex and CSL) and the conversion from one standard to the other was erroneous, and also very confusing, because they use different words for the same thing or the other way round: same words for different things, which ultimately resulted in wrong entry previews.
We went with the following mapping (conversion logic):
BibTeX
BibLaTeX
CSL
proposed logic, conditions and info
volume
volume
volume
number
issue
issue
For conversion to CSL or BibTeX: BibLaTeX number takes priority and supersedes BibLaTeX issue
number
number
issue
For conversion to CSL or BibTeX: BibLaTeX number takes priority and supersedes BibLaTeX issue
Some journals put the article-number (= eid) into the pages field. If BibLaTeX eid exists, map to csl number and provide this to the style. If pages exists, map to csl page. If eid WITHIN the pages field exists, detect the eid and map to csl number. If both eid and pages exists, ideally map to both csl number and csl page respectively and provide this to the style. Ideally the citationstyle should be able to flexibly choose the rendering. If this is not possible then map biblatex eid to CSL page, since this is sufficient to comply with APA 7th edition, but will break other citationstyles (e.g. IEEE)
pages
pages
page
“”
You can try out the new behaviour in the newest development version (make sure to create a backup of your library before trying) or wait for the next release of JabRef.
-- I thought the developers could provide the help I need; but, alas I was wrong. I have wasted too much of my time and the time of Christoph and Oliver. I will try to create a small python program that will modify my BibTex files (over 1200 entries) to be compatible with 5.1 and/or 5.2. I hope that others who have older versions of JabRef will be more careful than I, before they upgrade 
