bishtexa

A bibtex management system in bash (on github)

The Name

Given that the scripts are in bash and they manage bibtex files, I decided to call the repository bishtexa because its pronounciation resembles the word bistecca (steak) in Italian.

Goal

To create the most lightweight method to manage the bibliography for latex files. Without leaving the terminal.

Motivation

All methods to manage the papers do too much. They:

• rename the paper (usualy with too many white spaces in the name…)
• manage the paper itself giving it an ad hoc location
• manage relative notes
• manage relative metadata (highlights, in-pdf notes,….)
• a cloud option
• provide you with an online account (obviously)
• other things you don’t know
• write/export a bibtex file

This is in contrast with the UNIX principle. I tried to fix that.

Content

I assume you have a consistent method to mangage the digital papers. For example by using last_name_leading_author_date.pdf method, as in nakamoto08.pdf. For this reason you only need an easy method to build your bibliography.bib file and an easy method to retreive the citation-keyword when you are writing the paper. Occasionally you can forget how you saved your paper, for this reason a third script paper.sh is provided.

There are three files:

• createBiblio.sh create a bib entry for a pdf; there is currently some manual work to do, mainly because pdfs have not the right metadata
• extract_from_biblio.sh: a fzf based script to select the paper you need to cite in a fuzzy way based on title and abstract
• paper.sh: another fzf based script to find the paper you want to read

Dependencies

• Currently the bulk of the bib file is taken out of Google Scholar, thans to the (python) repository of venthur. I plan to find a substitute of google scholar and to do that in bash.
• libpopper is needed to convert from pdf to text in the createBiblio.sh script
• fzf is used to have the fuzzy choice
• xsel to copy to clipboard the citations

Vim integration

I don’t think there’s a need for a vim plugin in this case, a simple one liner in the config file would do. I use

nnoremap <leader>m :!tmux split-pane -h 'extract_from_biblio.sh'<CR><CR>

(extract_from_biblio must be in your PATH). It copies to clipboard the citation so that you can simply paste it in you file. I use tmux, but you can use this one liner for a normal terminal (e.g. urxvt):

nnoremap <leader>m :!urxvt -x 'extract_from_biblio.sh'<CR><CR>

TODO

• can we ditch google schoolar?
• aggregate the three script and do a self contained bash script with option, to be called bishtexa.sh
• an external config file