Re: org-ref & helm-bibtex notes

[Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de>]

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On 2015-06-16 Tue 17:39, Julian Burgos wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I have been using org-ref for a while, using reftex to insert citations in
> my org documents.  Now I am switching to helm-bibtex, which is pretty
> awesome.  I have a couple of question about the note files.  Org-ref uses
> a single file to keep notes (e.g. notes.org), but helm-bibtex assumes that
> notes are kept in separate files, one per article.  My questions are:
>
> a) Do you have a preference in the single file vs multiple files question?
>  Are advantages/disadvantages?  I tend to prefer the single file option,
> it makes search easy and also I can add TODO items that later I can pull
> out in the agenda view.  With multiple files this would not be as easy. 
> Do you agree?

Hi, I’m the author of helm-bibtex.  There was recently a discussion about
this on Github:

  https://github.com/tmalsburg/helm-bibtex/issues/40

Someone convinced me that storing all notes in one file is better and
there is an experimental (and incomplete) implementation in a topic
branch:

  https://github.com/tmalsburg/helm-bibtex/tree/note-files

(Multiple note files will still be possible for users who prefer that.)

> b) Helm-bibtex identifies which references have a note file, adding a
> symbol on the reference list.  Can we make helm-bibtex look into a single
> file (say the "notes.org" file), look for the :Custom_ID: properties of
> the entries, and use that to mark the reference list?  I am teaching
> myself emacs-lisp but this is above my capacity right now.

Yes, something like that needs to be included.  The unresolved question
is how BibTeX keys should be stored in the notes file.  I find property
drawers incredibly clunky and in my experience they can considerably
slow down Emacs in large org files (that’s the reason why I don’t use
org-contacts as much as a would like).

My current favorite format for entries in the notes file is the
following:

  * Author: Title (year)                       :BibTeXkey:
  Here are the notes …

The only problem I see with this is that BibTeX allows keys to contain
colons, and a key with a colon would break org’s tag syntax.

Suggestions welcome.

  Titus


>
> Many thanks,
>
> Julian


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