2013-03-14T16:35:44+01:00 Michael Goerz goerz@physik.fu-berlin.de 2009-08-25T00:00:00+02:00 blog/2009/08/adding-local-file-fields-to-bibdesk-created-bibtex-file <p>BibTeX files that were created with the BibDesk program on the Mac store links to local files as smart references, which has a lot of benefits:</p> <blockquote> <p>To be precise, it&#8217;s a base64 encoded (keyed) archived dictionary containing a relative path and a file alias (an alias stores a full path and a file ID). It is designed to support a large range of storage procedures, as it can find a file by relative path, absolute path, and file ID (in that order). This means that you can</p> <ul> <li>move/rename the .bib file (as it stores full paths)</li> <li>move/rename a linked file (as it stores file IDs)</li> <li>move the .bib file and linked files together (as it stores relative paths)</li> <li>copy the .bib file and linked files togther, even between different machines (as it stores relative paths) <a href='http://n2.nabble.com/Path-implications-when-sharing-bib-files-with-Bdsk-File-1-entries-td661338.html#a662004'>(bibdesk user mailing list)</a></li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>This works perfectly as long as you stay on a Mac. However, if you have to share the BibTeX file with someone who cannot run BibDesk, it may be useful to add some human-readable information as well. For this, I&#8217;ve written a small script that is an adaption of the code found at <a href='http://bibdesk-users.661331.n2.nabble.com/Loss-of-local-file-links-td2209604.html'>http://n2.nabble.com/Loss-of-local-file-links-td2209604.html</a> It adds a Local-File field to the BibTeX file with the relative path of the referenced file.</p> <p><a href='http://gist.github.com/goerz/5157942'>http://gist.github.com/goerz/5157942</a></p> <script src='http://gist.github.com/180474.js'> </script>