BibGallery is a light, simple literature management library on Python that organizes BibTeX, PDF, and image files. It generates HTML files to display the saved images for the researcher to browse.

You can benefit from BibGallery if

• You use LaTeX or Typst to write and thus save and cite your literature using BibTeX.
• You use screenshots to take notes of your literature.

I wrote BibGallery since my notes are essentially screenshots and I would like to review them efficiently.

BibGallery relies on pdf2bib, BibtexParser, PyMuPDF, watchdog, and Pandas.

BibGallery works best in Visual Studio Code where you can easily navigate between files.

Literatures have to be organized into categories and assigned themes. Each category uses one BibTeX file.

Short codes (also known as citation keys) in BibTeX files should be formulated as Author-Year-Theme, for example, Akbarzadeh-2020-Graphic-Statics-Table. In case of short code collisions, add -Number to the end, for example, Akbarzadeh-2020-Graphic-Statics-Table-1 and Akbarzadeh-2020-Graphic-Statics-Table-2.

Your file structure should be:

root
├ Bib.py
├ Main.py
├ bib
│ ├ Category1.bib
│ └ Category2.bib
└ PDF
  ├ Category1
  │ ├ Author-Year-Theme Name of One Publication.pdf
  │ ├ Author-Year-Theme Name of One Publication.jpg
  │ ├ Author-Year-Theme Name of One Publication2.png
  │ ├ Author-Year-Theme Name of Another Publication.pdf
  │ ├ Author-Year-Theme Name of Another Publication.jpg
  │ └ ...
  └ Category2
    └ ...

Set up by specifying the categories to inspect. The root folder and subfolders can be configured if necessary.

Parameters:

• inspect_categories : list of str. List of categories
• root_folder_path : str, default: ""
• additional_categories : list of str, default: []. List of categories that you only have bibtex files. E.g. bibtex from your collaborators or temporary bibtex files
• bibtex_folder : str, default: "bib"
• bibtex_latex_folder : str, default: "bib_latex"
• pdf_folder : str, default: "PDF"
• html_folder : str, default: "Gallery"
• pdf_collect_folder : str, default: "to_collect"
• io_folder : str, default: ""

Minimal working example:

from Bib import Bib
bib = Bib(inspect_categories=["Category1", "Category2"])

Parse the BibTeX. If encoded for LaTeX, decode as Unicode plain text. Check if BibTeX/PDF/images are missing for any entry. Only if all three are present, an entry will be considered complete. Incomplete entries will be listed in the terminal. All results will be saved in BibCheckResultAll.md, BibCheckResultNonBooks.md and BibCheckResultAll.csv. Only complete entries will be marked t in the results. Reviewing the results in Visual Studio Code allows you to click the links to go to the PDF files easily.

Parameters:

• update_bibtex : str, default: None. Name of the additional bibtex file in io_folder for replacing existing bibtex
• show_incomplete : bool, default: True. Show incomplete entries in terminal
• check_books : bool, default: False. Show incomplete book entries in terminal

Encode the BibTeX for LaTeX and save them as separate files in self.bibtex_latex_folder.

Generate HTML galleries using the pictures in self.html_folder. Pictures are grouped by theme and titles link to the PDF files. Uses BibCheckResultAll.csv saved in Bib.check(self).

Update HTML galleries automatically each time a new screenshot is saved.

Create new entries based on PDF files in self.pdf_collect_folder. Rename and move them into the main category folders and extract BibTeX based on the PDF metadata. The pdf should be renamed as its theme.

The category of the PDF is specified by its parent folder. By default, the PDF to collect should be put as

root
└ to_collect
  └ Category
    └ Theme.pdf

and will be converted into

root
└ PDF
  └ Category
    └ Author-Year-Theme Name of Publication.pdf

If themes collide, simply leave additional spaces at the end.

Inspect the entries cited in the Typst file and extract only the BibTeX used. Save both the plain text and LaTeX version.

Parameters:

• input : str, default: "input.typ". Name of the typst file in self.io_folder
• output : str, default: "selected.bib". Name of the bibtex file for selected entries in self.io_folder

Rename a theme from old to new. Affects BibTeX, PDFs and images.

Parameters:

• old : str. Old theme
• new : str. New theme

Rename a short code from old to new. Affects BibTeX, PDFs and images.

Parameters:

• old : str. Old short code
• new : str. New short code