BibTeX Plugin: DevLog[2]

[xUser5000]

Week 2 has arrived
At the end of it, the following tasks should be finished:

• Enable the citation popup to insert references into the note content
• Publish the plugin (release 0.1)
• Gather feedback about the initial release

If the above work is done successfully, I shall take on more tasks.

[roman_r_m]

@xUser5000

Week 2 has arrived

I believe it's already week 3. Time sure flies.

[xUser5000]

Yeah I know but I'm using zero-based indexing

[xUser5000]

Announcing BibTeX Plugin version 0.1.0
This is the first official release of the plugin. You can find more details here.
The following features are included in the initial release:

• Register the "BibTeX Plugin" section in the config screen to allow the user to specify the source of references.
• Parse the .bib file specified by the user into JSON format.
• Added a toolbar button that triggers the main command of the plugin: addBibTeXRefernce Command.
• Added a dialog that pops up when the command is invoked to display a list of imported references.
• Allow the user to choose a reference from the list in order to be inserted into the note content.

I encourage everyone to install the plugin and play a bit with it. (It still lacks so many features though ). As always, all suggestions, issues, pull requests are welcomed.

[bepolymathe]

Hi @xUser5000

After a quick first look, I think it's already very functional. A few comments though:

• the window that takes care of displaying the list of references is maybe a bit narrow.
• it could be useful to be able to search in this list by typing some characters.
  Anyway, thanks for this work!

[xUser5000]

@bepolymathe

the window that takes care of displaying the list of references is maybe a bit narrow.

You are right, I will try to add that in the next minor version.

@bepolymathe

it could be useful to be able to search in this list by typing some characters.
Anyway, thanks for this work!

Yes, this is a critical feature in my plan, and I'm gonna implement it in a future release.

[zakky]

Thank you @xUser5000 for the great work.
I also had a quick look and have a few comments:

• I think that dialog that displays the references could list authors and year of the reference (also searchable)
• I think citekeys should be the same as in the bibtex file
• possibility to choose more than one reference to cite at once

But once more thank you for creating this plugin.

[pravsripad]

Thanks a lot @xUser5000 for this useful plugin. I tried it and have some comments as well,

1. Some things people have already mentioned above:

• ability to search
• author, year and name of the reference
• multiple references at the same time.

2. In fact, having only a search bar is better since if you have a lot of references the page overflows and looks ugly. See,
   
3. My bib file was exported from Mendeley and the plugin failed initially, I had to manually check the bib file for some errors (e.g. no entry key for this item @techreport{,). Is there some way to show these errors on Joplin? Line number where the parsing fails maybe.
4. A "nice to have" option would be to create a new note with the information from the bib file with title, abstract etc. This way one can quickly find a reference and read all the information without leaving joplin.

Thanks again for the great work.

[xUser5000]

@zakky @pravsripad

Ability to search

This one of the important features and I was planning all along to implement it, so rest assured.

Show author and year of publication in the dialog

What do you think the format should be? Should I write it in a strict APA? Or should I just write it in a made-up format (like title:author: year)?

Select multiple references at the same time

This was not actually in the plan but it is nice to have.

Size of the dialog (size is too small and the page overflows)

This is an annoying bug and I will probably fix it right in the next release.

Show a detailed message of where the parsing failed

I've already solved this bug and it will be included in the next version.

@pravsripad

A "nice to have" option would be to create a new note with the information from the bib file with title, abstract etc. This way one can quickly find a reference and read all the information without leaving joplin.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I can have that now, I guess it has a low priority.

[pravsripad]

Thanks for the quick reply and taking care of the bugs.

@xUser5000

What do you think the format should be? Should I write it in a strict APA? Or should I just write it in a made-up format (like title:author: year)?

Typically the drop down can include title, author, year, and once selected only the author and year are included. Multiple references are separated by semicolons, see below examples.

I would personally prefer {author: year: title} in that order.

[xUser5000]

That's great