BibHelper: A LaTeX bibliography and notes manager
Original Author: Eddie Pettis (npettis – AT - ecn.purdue.edu)
Current Author: Doug Herbert (drh – AT - purdue.edu)
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MOTIVATION
Our lab at Purdue (http://engineering.purdue.edu/ResearchGroups/HELPS/)
uses a single BiBTeX file to manage all of our papers. This file is
symbolically linked to in every LaTeX directory, so we don't have to
worry about individually managing our directories. Over time, however,
we have accumulated a very large number of papers about a vast array
of topics. Subsequently, the current system has become difficult to
manage and even more difficult for the incoming student to traverse.
The idea behind BibHelper is simple. A management tool (BibAdder) is
used to add new papers to the repository. In our lab, this tool is
used by our advisor, who has write permissions on the library directory.
The users use the note-taking tool (BibHelper) to keep track of each
paper and make links between papers.
The ultimate goal is that the links between papers are visible to
everyone in the group. Because links exist, scripts can be written to
gather a set of papers that are related to the current paper. Clearly,
this can be very effective when writing theses or other large papers.
Because the links are shared, new students can come in and immediately
begin reading from a single paper and flesh out his or her background.
The notes should be visible only to the user who wrote them. This
prevents others from merely reading other people's notes (and not the
papers), avoiding collective laziness. However, the BibHelper tool
should report to other users who has read the given paper, so a
confused grad student can ask another person in the lab for explanation
or discussion.
The aforementioned feature set is not currently complete. However, a
single user can add entries to the database and take notes on the
papers. The links between papers are currently not functional because
we are trying to determine a good way to maintain permissions and keep a
simple database. We actively welcome feature requests, contributions,
and bug fixes. Thanks for using our tool.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
- PyQt 3.1 or higher
- Python 2.2.2 or higher
- latex2html
OPTIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
- xpdf or Adobe Acrobat (acroread) to view papers.
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Simply copy the files into a directory. Make directories entitled
"tex" and "papers". Following the example provided, modify the file
bibconstants.py to match your installation.
Run ./BibAdder.py to add files to the database.
Run ./BibHelper.py to write notes. Add any PDFs papers to the "papers"
directory.
If you have an existing BibTeX document, copy it into the directory and
name it "reference.bib". Then, run "python parseReferenceBib.py" to
import the file into a new database. WARNING: THIS WILL ERASE ANY
EXISTING DATABASE YOU MAY HAVE. We are currently making a small script
that will merge two databases.
DISCLAIMER
This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
For complete details see the LICENSE file in the source distribution.