dotfiles/writing

Writing module

bibtex - plain-text reference management zathura - keyboard-driven PDF reading

This readme is a little out of date, as are the scripts below. They are old, I used them during my time as a student and they are probably written terribly. But I still think there is value in them, hence not removing them from the repo just yet.

bib-due

The bib-due script depends on (gnu) grep, awk, and sed, date if using date filtering capabilities. It is currently written in a rather haphazard way, and prone to breakage. On the other hand, it does what it's supposed to do: list bibtex entries which have their due-date coming up.

The script needs bibtex entries to be marked with two fields: due, containing a due date (ideally in YYYY-MM-DD format, for easy sorting), and priority containing a read priority. It will also, by default attempt to grab the values of the fields author and title, as well as the name of the bibtex key of the entry.

It can be invoked with the path to a bibtex file bib-due path/to/library.bib, and will gather the entries from the respective file. It can be invoked without an argument if the environment variable $BIBFILE is declared (pointing to a bibtex file).

Example output looks as follows:

The output can then be filtered further through other programs.

Bib-due itself allows 2 filtering options: until a certain date (-u), and at least a certain priority (-p).

Using priority is relatively self-explanatory: 1 is the highest priority, 3 the lowest (technically, no priority is the lowest). Choosing -p3 means priority 1, 2, and 3 will be displayed. Choosing -p1 will only display the highest priority items.

Using the date works as a cut-off for the future, and it uses gnu date to calculate the correct date. That makes things like -u 'fri this week' possible, showing only upcoming items until the end of the week. Read the date manual for more information. There will likely not be a new option for filtering dates from a certain point forward since I don't need it and before implementing more stuff what's there should be more solid. (and read your damn overdue texts!)

Again, this script will (for now¹) break when bibtex files are formatted in any way other than what it expects. An example of a working entry:

@InBook{Borhi2016,
  author    = {László Borhi},
  chapter   = {1956: Self-Liberation},
  pages     = {117--137},
  publisher = {Indiana University Press},
  title     = {Dealing with dictators: the {United States}, {Hungary}, and {East Central Europe}, 1942-1989},
  year      = {2016},
  due       = {2020-05-07},
  file      = {:Borhi2016 - Dealing with Dictators_ the United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe, 1942 1989.pdf:PDF},
  pagetotal = {564},
  priority  = {prio1},
  timestamp = {2020-05-08},
}

Important fields are author, title, due, priority. These need to exist, and need to be ordered alphabetically. Otherwise there will probably be some breakage.

rofi-bib-due

The rofi-bib-due script utilizes the bib-due script and depends on an existing installed rofi module (see here). On invocation, it creates a list of upcoming readings, and allows selecting one of the readings. The selected reading will be passed along to $FILEREADER if it is declared, falling back to xdg-open if not.

Currently, the path to the reading pdf is hard-coded to be path/to/bibtex.bib/pdf, and the name has to begin with the exact bibtex key; otherwise the script will not be able to find the pdf.

An example of the script in action: (window size has been reduced for the recording, cutting off most entry names)

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1. And probably for some time since I don't see myself sinking too much more time into this in the near future. I actually need to get some of the upcoming readings done that I can now list! 🙂 ↩︎