Bibfilex

A free bibliographic manager

for GNU/Linux, Windows and OS X.

Copyright Massimo Nardello, Modena (Italy) 2013-2019.

Version 1.2.8.

This software is not under development any more.

Bibfilex is a free bibliographic manager for GNU/Linux, Windows and OS X with Carbon. It's useful to create and to manage archives of bibliographical items (books, articles, etc.) with possible attachments of any kind according to Biblatex structure and rules, even if it can be used also with a wordprocessor like Writer or Word.

Bi­bla­tex is a package of Latex which im­ple­men­ts its bib­li­o­graphic fa­cil­i­ties in con­junc­tion with Bibtex. To learn more about this, read the manual of Bibfilex or better download the official manual of BibLatex from http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex/doc/biblatex.pdf. On the Internet there are also many other guides on this matter.

Bibfilex is far less advanced than other bibliographic managers like JabRef or KBibTex, and allows only few customizations. Its strength is simplicity, speed, especially when used with many items, and lightness: it's a compiled software (no runtime needed, like Java Virtual Machine or .Net framework) and uses a fast database to store data. Furthermore, it run natively on GNU/Linux with GTK or Qt libraries, on Windows and OS X with Carbon libraries.

Bibfilex may create and manage files which are catalogs of many items -- also thousands of them. A file of Bibfilex is a database of SQLite (www.sqlite.org), a popular software whose data can be easily read and exported through different tools available on the Internet. In a Bibfilex file data are not stored according to Biblatex format, so it cannot be referenced as bibliographic file within a Latex document. Anyway, Bibfilex may export automatically or with a one-click functionality all or part of the content of a file in a Biblatex format file; this one can be read directly with JabRef, imported in Zotero or be referenced in a Latex document. At the same time, Bibfilex may import directly a JabRef database or any other BibLatex file with the same structure.

Bibfilex introduces few changes in the position of some fields when compared to the official manual of Biblatex. In the list of the required fields have been added some others which sometimes are requested in the humanistic field -- like “publisher”, “location”, etc. In this way, all the fields which are more frequently compiled are show all together in the “Main fields” section of the interface.

The main features of the software are:

  • store the items according to each one of the entry types described in the Biblatex manual (book, article, etc.);

  • import the content of a file in Biblatex format like a JabRef database, a BibTex file exported from Mendeley or downloaded from Google Books;

  • export data in a Biblatex file;

  • import and export data from a Bibfilex file to another along with possible attachments;

  • filter the items on a single field;

  • filter the items by keywords;

  • filter the items on three fields or less, or modify manually the SQL statement of the filter to work on more fields or to make it more suitable or complex;

  • filter the items by the BibTex keys contained in a Latex document within a \cite{}

  • command or the like;

  • replace the citation commands (\cite, etc.) and \printbibliography command in a Latex document with extended citations and bibliography, which are composed according to a user defined pattern, and convert the resulting file in other formats with Pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc);

  • associate various attachments (files of every kind) to each item; the attachments are zipped and stored in a directory with the same name and path of the Bibfilex file in use, and automatically managed by the software; the number of attachments is limited only

  • by the available disk space;

  • activate auto completion of data in each field with “Ctrl + Space”;

  • compose the citation of one or more items according to a user defined pattern, and copy them in the clipboard in Latex or HTML format; in the last case, available only for GNU/Linux and Mac OS versions, the citation may be pasted in a word processor like Writer or Word maintaining font formatting (italic, small caps, etc.);

  • create automatically unique BibTex keys according to a pattern defined by the user in an item, in the filtered items or in all the items of the file in use;

  • store a specific keyword in a buffer and insert or remove it easily within the selected item with a shortcut;

  • specify the fields (columns) shown in the grid view of the data;

  • insert easily special characters and keywords with a dedicated form;

  • go easily to a specified item with bookmarks;

  • copy in the current item the content of some fields of another item referenced by the crossref field;

  • check for double items in the file in use.

Bibfilex has been developed in Free Pascal with Lazarus (http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org). Thanks to this compiler, Bibfilex runs natively on GNU/Linux with GTK libraries, GNU/Linux with Qt, on Windows and on OS X with Carbon libraries. Up to now, the interface of the software is only in English. The source code is available in the Download section.

Bibfilex is free software and is released under the GPL license version 3 (www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt).

Download

The latest release of Bibfilex is the 1.2.8 and has been released on October 20 2016. Download the software from the Github page in https://github.com/maxnd/bibfilex.

This software has been made with Lazarus