Page 1 of 1

Bibtex export

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:08 am
by Sayyaar
Is there a way to share / export citations as a list of bibtex references? I get that I can copy individual citations in bibtex format, but it would be really handy to select an arbitrary number of citations and export them as a single .bib file. As far as I can tell at the moment, sharing a list of references is limited to email using RIS format.

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:43 pm
by Serge
Thank you for your feature request!

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:58 pm
by Serge
BibTex export in Bookends v3.3.4.
It should work via the standard Share action with one limitation - you should choose ‘Save to Files’ action to save as a file to iCloud Drive or other app folders. And then open this file from there for further actions.
BOT BibTexEport.png
BOT BibTexEport.png (16.04 KiB) Viewed 9924 times
BOT BibTexEport 1.png
BOT BibTexEport 1.png (61.16 KiB) Viewed 9924 times
BOT BibTexEport 2.png
BOT BibTexEport 2.png (21.56 KiB) Viewed 9924 times

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:08 am
by Sayyaar
Thanks very much for this. I have already put it to good use for an article I am currently writing, with nearly 100 references, and it works well.

For anyone else who is interested in why I want bibtex on iOS, I'll add this brief explanation.

I write primarily on my iPad using pandoc markdown. Once the file is ready, I upload it to a linux server for conversion via pandoc. (Many editors can do this, but I find that Textastic on the iPad is really easy to use for uploading and downloading from a remote server.) The server also has all my custom pandoc templates and academic fonts. At the same time, I collect all my references in a group in Bookends for iOS and, thanks to the handy new bibtex export, I can create the .bib file, which I then upload to my server along with the markdown file. Pandoc can use the .bib file directly (and also convert it to other useful formats, if needed).

I used to have to rely on the mac version of Bookends for bibtex export, but now an all-iPad workflow is possible, which is super convenient, especially if I need to make substantial additions to an existing bibliography.

One caveat: if you are used to the bibtex export on the mac version, you should know that the CSL-based bibtex export on iOS does NOT use the citekey in the User1 field. It generates the citekeys automatically as something like: Brock_1982, and sometimes it makes mistakes by leaving spaces in citekeys. The exported citekey is also different from the pandoc citation export option that Bookends for iOS provides. I'm not sure if it is possible to change this without a new CSL style, but a little regex magic makes it possible to quickly revert citekeys to the desired form.

Thanks, Serge, for the new export option. It's just what I needed.

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:13 am
by iandol
Thank you for your description of your workflow! I think it would be good to try to standardise so that the citekeys are equivalent in BiBTeX output from iOS and macOS.

Serge, would this just require a custom CSL format, or is there more that needs to be done?

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:10 am
by Serge
We will update a preinstalled bibtex style to use the user1 field if available or to generate Brock1982 (LastnameYear) citeKey.

Re: Bibtex export

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 10:45 am
by mk7
Hi @Sayyaar, this might be a little off topic, and you'll have to excuse my ignorance, but I'm interested in how you get pandoc running on a remote server like that. What's required to set up something like that? Does it actually do all the pandoc conversions for you, bibliography and all? I would love to be able to write completely on iOS but this has been the one major issue for me.