I believe I will speak for countless users in pleading for the addition of a full WYSIWYG editing window for Output Styles. This would offer real-time preview for whatever reference type the cursor is in using realistic examples without having to save and exit to see each modification. It should also make it possible to search and replace characters throughout both templates (bibliography and footnotes). It would then become easy to replace instances of ASCII quotation marks with opening and closing typographical marks (doing this manually for all the used reference styles is extremely tedious, especially since it has to be done whenever there is an update to a style sheet; and imagine the situation if you need to have British and American output styles).
Such a full WYSIWYG editing window is really a necessity and should, I think, be urgently implemented to make modifying output styles not only easier but also less frustrating. I hope that other users will second this.
On 29 October 2010 I pleaded for a full WYSIWYG editing window with real-time preview for output styles. So far there has been no improvement (in fact ever since I purchased EndNote 4). Saddest of all, my post did not elicit any support from other users. I hope that bumping it to the top with further details will lead to some discussion. I think that real-time preview is still a much needed feature in EndNote. Having to modify a style, especially to make a localized version, for instance, would be so much easier.
Having just spent several hours editing the Chicago 16th A style to eliminate the mistakes it contains and adapting it for use in French texts, I would like to suggest the following improvements:
Make it possible to print out the full contents of an output style to help studying its formatting at the table. Since there is no way to select the entire text in the editing window, my current method is to use a screen grabbing utility and print out four pages: two for the bibliography (one showing Generic to Edited Book, the other Electronic Article to Web Page), and two for the footnotes. Please note that this does not take into account all the other pages, which also have their importance and should also be easily printable.
In the Preview pane of the database (i.e., where you enter citations), show the citation as it will appear in the bibliography and in the footnotes, not only in the bibliography. When you make a change to the style, you need to exit editing to save changes and look at the preview, where only the bibliographical citation is shown. However, in order to check a footnote’s format, you need to insert and expand a citation in Word; and you need to repeat the procedure for every single change you want to check, since modifying output styles is a very incremental operation if you do not want to make a complete mess.
It would be helpful if the Preview pane’s title bar showed the Reference Type of the currently selected title. This would avoid having to open the entry just to check this detail should it not be fully evident from looking at it. Again, this would make editing output styles easier.
a WYSIWYG preview pane during editing would be helpful for editing generic references or unfamiliar references within a style.
ma_roberge. your point #3 in your sencond post is possible in X5 (the version I am using). you can change the fields displayed in your reference window to display reference type. I think this has been an option for many versions, as it has been the first thing I toggle whenever I install EndNote on my PCs…
to change the displayed fields in the list windows, go to Edit | Preferences… | Display Fields. then adjust your 8 available columns to have whichever fields you want. This is where you can also choose to display all authors in the author fields (checkbox at the bottom of that window) instead of just the first one (something I find very useful generally).