bibtex-tidy as a new vimetex friend?

[ccaprani]

Duplicate keys, bad formatting, and a host of other problems can make working with bib files a pain.

bibtex-tidy is a cool tool that makes this much easier. It has a CLI through npm and I'm wondering if it would be relatively easy to add it to vimtex as an optional add-on?

That is, if bibtex-tidy is on your system (npm install -g bibtex-tidy), then execute something like <localleader>lT to run bibtex-tidy on the current bib file.

I don't have the skills to execute this idea unfortunately.

[lervag]

Thanks for mentioning this! I've started by adding a short comment on this plugin in the docs (see :help vimtex-af-ftplugin-bib).

Reg. an optional add-on within VimTeX: I'm not sure it is a good idea. Several reasons:

1. Different users will probably want different behaviour. This means we would need one or more extra options. We would also need documentation to guide users on how to install and similar.
2. It is actually quite easy to make a custom mapping that does what you want. This would also allow to customize exactly as you want it.

As a short proof of the latter point: put the below code in e.g. your ~/.vim/ftplugin/bib.vim or ~/.config/nvim/ftplugin/bib.vim:

nnoremap <localleader>lT :!bibtex-tidy %:p<cr>

You could also use more advanced options:

nnoremap <localleader>lT :!bibtex-tidy --omit=id,name --space --sort %:p<cr>

[ccaprani]

Dear people from the future: this works a treat; though <leader>lT clashed with the default contents mapping, so I've used the following, with my own preferences for the CLI args:

nnoremap <localleader>bt :!bibtex-tidy --align --space=4 --duplicates --merge=combine %:p<cr>

As ever @lervag has been super helpful for a not-too-skilled person like me. Nicest guy in the business - thank you!

[lervag]

As ever @lervag has been super helpful for a not-too-skilled person like me. Nicest guy in the business - thank you!

My pleasure! :)

[nachovizzo]

For those also looking into bibtex-tidy. I've added a "formatter" to use the tools, just a formatting tool. More info on the Neoformat repo: sbdchd/neoformat#456

[lervag]

Cool, thanks for the heads up!