[O] [PATCH] ox-bibtex.el: Extend to use bibtex files not in current, working directory

[Konrad Herbst]

Hello everybody,

I would like to provide a patch for the ox-bibtex.el module which can 
now handle bibtexfile destinations of the form:

#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: /home/user/Literature/foo.bib plain option:-d

but still accepts bibfiles in the working directory.

I really like this module as it makes on-the-fly literature referencing 
so easy, but I really missed the "feature" to use  include global 
bib-files for example. As I recognized other users had the same feeling, 
as these threads on the list show:
 - problem of path in using ox-bibtex, Joseph Vidal-Rosset, 2014-01-05 
08:35:58 GMT
 - [O] ox-bibtex: How to use Bib file in a different directory?, 
Richard Stanton, 2014-02-17 11:09:39 -8:00.

As motivation I think this solution is more convenient than creating 
symbolic links or changing environment variables/config-files.

I used functions like 'file-name-base`, so in principle this 
implementation should be OS-independent but I did not test this, maybe 
this should be tried for MS-OS paths for example.
Hope this is of any use.

Best,
Konrad Herbst
>From 9c17d3df2de6a39229970461da80fb6d04bb6467 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Konrad Herbst <k.her...@stud.uni-heidelberg.de>
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 15:26:10 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] ox-bibtex.el: Extend to use bibtex files not in current
 working directory

* contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el (org-bibtex-process-bib-files): Process bibtexfilename so that it does not have to be in the same directory.
---
 contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el | 27 ++++++++++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el b/contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el
index 7caa2e2..7cb8972 100644
--- a/contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el
+++ b/contrib/lisp/ox-bibtex.el
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
 ;;
 ;; The usage is as follows:
 ;;
-;;   #+BIBLIOGRAPHY: bibfilebasename stylename optional-options
+;;   #+BIBLIOGRAPHY: bibfilename stylename optional-options
 ;;
 ;; e.g. given foo.bib and using style plain:
 ;;
@@ -44,6 +44,10 @@
 ;;
 ;; "stylename" can also be "nil", in which case no style will be used.
 ;;
+;; Full filepaths are also possible:
+;;
+;;   #+BIBLIOGRAPHY: /home/user/Literature/foo.bib plain option:-d
+;;
 ;; Optional options are of the form:
 ;;
 ;;   option:-foobar pass '-foobar' to bibtex2html
@@ -187,7 +191,16 @@ Return new parse tree."
 	(when (equal (org-element-property :key keyword) "BIBLIOGRAPHY")
 	  (let ((arguments (org-bibtex-get-arguments keyword))
 		(file (org-bibtex-get-file keyword))
-		temp-file)
+		temp-file
+		out-file)
+	    ;; Test if filename is given with .bib-extension and strip
+    	    ;; it off. Filenames with another extensions will be
+	    ;; untouched and will finally rise an error in bibtex2html.
+	    (setq file (if (equal (file-name-extension file) "bib")
+			   (file-name-sans-extension file) file))
+	    ;; Outpufiles of bibtex2html will be put into current working directory
+	    ;; so define a variable for this.
+	    (setq out-file (file-name-base file))
 	    ;; limit is set: collect citations throughout the document
 	    ;; in TEMP-FILE and pass it to "bibtex2html" as "-citefile"
 	    ;; argument.
@@ -219,7 +232,7 @@ Return new parse tree."
 	    (and temp-file (delete-file temp-file))
 	    ;; Open produced HTML file, and collect Bibtex key names
 	    (with-temp-buffer
-	      (insert-file-contents (concat file ".html"))
+	      (insert-file-contents (concat out-file ".html"))
 	      ;; Update `org-bibtex-html-entries-alist'.
 	      (goto-char (point-min))
 	      (while (re-search-forward
@@ -233,14 +246,14 @@ Return new parse tree."
 	       ((org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'html)
 		(insert (format "<div id=\"bibliography\">\n<h2>%s</h2>\n"
 				(org-export-translate "References" :html info)))
-		(insert-file-contents (concat file ".html"))
+		(insert-file-contents (concat out-file ".html"))
 		(insert "\n</div>"))
 	       ((org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'ascii)
 		;; convert HTML references to text w/pandoc
 		(unless (eq 0 (call-process "pandoc" nil nil nil
-					    (concat file ".html")
+					    (concat out-file ".html")
 					    "-o"
-					    (concat file ".txt")))
+					    (concat out-file ".txt")))
 		  (error "Executing pandoc failed"))
 		(insert
 		 (format
@@ -249,7 +262,7 @@ Return new parse tree."
 		   "References"
 		   (intern (format ":%s" (plist-get info :ascii-charset)))
 		   info)))
-		(insert-file-contents (concat file ".txt"))
+		(insert-file-contents (concat out-file ".txt"))
 		(goto-char (point-min))
 		(while (re-search-forward
 			"\\[ \\[bib\\][^ ]+ \\(\\]\\||[\n\r]\\)" nil t)
-- 
2.0.0