ytaka / helm-bibtex

A helm source for searching entries in BibTeX bibliographies.

helm-bibtex

A helm source for managing BibTeX bibliographies.

Key features:

• Quick access to your bibliography from within Emacs
• Provides instant search results as you type
• Quick access to online bibliographic databases such as Pubmed, arXiv, Google Scholar, Library of Congress, etc.
• Support for multiple BibTeX files
• Open the PDF associated with an entry
• Open the URL or DOI of an entry in the browser
• Insert LaTeX cite command, ebib link, or pandoc citation depending on document type
• Insert BibTeX entry or plain text reference
• Add PDFs as attachments to emails
• Add notes to an entry
• Edit selected entry

Here is a screenshot showing a search for entries with the word "eye tracking".

The regular expression "eye.?tracking" allows searching for different spellings ("eye tracking", "eye-tracking", "eyetracking"). A looped square symbol (⌘) next to an entry indicates that a PDF is available. A pen symbol (✎) means that notes were added. At the bottom, there are dummy entries that can be used to search online databases. This list can be extended using the customization variable helm-bibtex-fallback-options.

Requirements

In order to run helm-bibtex, a number of packages have to be installed on your system. The easiest way to get these packages is through MELPA.

• Helm: incremental search framework (helm-bibtex is a plug-in for Helm)
• Ebib: a BibTeX database manager for Emacs
• dash: a powerful list-processing library
• s: the long lost Emacs string manipulation library.
• f: a modern API for working with files and directories

Installation

Helm-bibtex can be installed via MELPA. Alternatively, put the file helm-bibtex.el in a directory included in your load-path. Add the following line to your start-up file (typically init.el):

(autoload 'helm-bibtex "helm-bibtex" "" t)

Tell helm-bibtex where your BibTeX file is by setting the customization variable helm-bibtex-bibliography.

(setq helm-bibtex-bibliography "/path/to/bibtex-file.bib")

Alternatively, you can specify a list of BibTeX files.

(setq helm-bibtex-bibliography '("/path/to/bibtex-file-1.bib" "/path/to/bibtex-file-2.bib"))

Other customization variables are:

• helm-bibtex-library-path: Location where PDFs of the entries are stored
• helm-bibtex-pdf-open-function: Function used for opening PDFs (the default function opens them in Emacs).
• helm-bibtex-pdf-symbol: The symbol used to indicate that a PDF is present. This should be one character (default: "⌘")
• helm-bibtex-format-insert-citation-functions: The functions used for formatting citations. The publication can be cited, for example, as \cite{key} or ebib:key depending on the major mode of the current buffer. Note that the functions should accept a list of keys as input. With multiple marked entries one can insert multiple keys at once, e.g. \cite{key1,key2}. See the functions helm-bibtex-format-citation-ebib and helm-bibtex-format-citation-cite as examples. People who don't use Ebib (like myself) might prefer to use helm-bibtex-format-citation-org-link-to-PDF in org mode files, which inserts an org link to the PDF.
• helm-bibtex-notes-path: Location where notes are stored (one file per entry)
• helm-bibtex-notes-extension: File extension of the files containing the notes
• helm-bibtex-notes-symbol: The symbol used to indicate that notes were added. This should be one character (default: "✎").
• helm-bibtex-fallback-options: Online databases for which dummy entries are provided
• helm-bibtex-browser-function: The browser that is used to access online databases

Helm-bibtex assumes that PDFs and notes have the BibTeX key of their associated entries as their base names plus ".pdf" for PDFs and whatever extension is configured for notes (".org" by default).

By default, helm-bibtex opens PDFs in Emacs. If you prefer to use an external viewer (e.g. evince), you can put the following in your initialization file:

(setq helm-bibtex-pdf-open-function
	  (lambda (fpath) (shell-command-to-string
					   (concat "/usr/bin/evince " fpath " &"))))

Usage

The command helm-bibtex starts a new search. It is recommended to bind it to a convenient key for quick access. For filtering, the following fields are used: author, title, year, and entry-type. Regular expressions can be used as search terms. Example searches:

Everything ever published by Janet Fodor:

janet fodor

All PhD theses:

phdthesis

Lyn Frazier's PhD thesis:

phdthesis frazier

Publications about eyetracking (regular expression used to match various spellings: eyetracking, eye tracking, eye-tracking):

eye.?tracking

Conference presentations in 2013:

2013 inproceedings

Publications from 2010 and 2011:

\(2010\|2011\)

Articles co-authored by David Caplan and Gloria Waters:

article waters caplan

There are several actions for matching BibTeX entries:

• Open the PDF file associated with an entry if available (default).
• Open the URL or DOI associated with an entry in your web browser.
• Insert citation at point.
• Insert reference at point.
• Insert BibTeX key at point.
• Insert BibTeX entry at point.
• Add PDF as attachment to email.
• Edit notes associated with an entry.
• Show the entry in BibTeX file.

To execute an action, select an entry and press TAB to see the list of available actions. The default action (open PDF) can be triggered by just pressing enter in the list of matching entries.