A helm source for searching entries in a BibTeX bibliography.
- Quick access to your bibliography from within Emacs
- Provides instant search results as you type
- Support for multiple BibTeX files
- Insert BibTeX key of selected entry in your current document
- Open the PDF associated with an entry
- Add notes to an entry
- Edit selected entry
- Quick access to online bibliographic databases such as Pubmed, arXiv, Google Scholar, Library of Congress, etc.
Here is a screenshot showing a search for entries containing the word reading:
At the bottom of the list are dummy entries that can be used to search online databases. The following databases are preconfigured:
- Google Scholar
- arXiv
- Pubmed
- Bodleian Library
- Library of Congress
- Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
- British National Library
- Bibliothèque National de France
- Gallica Bibliothèque Numérique
This list can be extended using the customization variable helm-bibtex-fallback-options.
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
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 storedhelm-bibtex-pdf-open-function: Function used for opening PDFs (the default function opens them in Emacs)helm-bibtex-format-insert-key-function: Function used for formatting bibtex key when inserting (the default function returnes the key itself). Note that the function should accept a list of keys as input, with multiple marked entries one can insert multiple keys at once, e.g. \cite{key1,key2}.helm-bibtex-notes-path: Location where notes are stored (one file per entry)helm-bibtex-notes-extension: File extension of the files containing the noteshelm-bibtex-fallback-options: Online databases for which dummy entries are providedhelm-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).
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).
- Insert BibTeX key at point.
- Edit notes associated with an entry.
- Show the entry in the BibTeX file.
To execute an action, select an entry and press TAB to see the list of available actions.