#186 Automatic export and groups

[Benjamin Piwowarski]

I use jabref to maintain a centralised database of
bibtex entries, and I create other bibtex files for
papers so that the file remains small enough to be sent
to co-authors.

In order to keep some kind of synchronisation between
the two files, I create a group in the centralised
database and save the selection from time to time so I
have only to modify the centralised database.

A very useful functionality would be to be able to set
an automatic set of exports, defined from groups. Each
time I save the database (or press an "automatic
exports" button), the corresponding groups would be
automatically exported to some bibtex files.

[Billy B]

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Votes++

This is how I try to use jabref too but there are a number of things that make this workflow less than ideal.

1) There is no actual command "save group". So you have to actually select all the entries in a group and use "Save selected as"
2) The group settings always revert to "Gray out non-hits" after restaring JabRef, and with that mode Ctrl-A selects even the grayed out hits, not just the ones you want. So I always switch to "Hide non-hits" first then Ctrl-A to select all.
3) Since you probably just selected the group you want to save, that means generally focus will be on the groups list. But Ctrl-A doesn't work unless focus is on the main panel. So you have to remember to click there before selecting works. I usually end up hitting ctrl-a few times before realizing I got groups focused.
4) Once you have the right entries selected and do "Save selected as", the save dialog doesn't remember where you last exported to. It always opens up in the main JabRef directory. So every time to make a change and want to re-export you have to navigate back to the proper directory. (This is on Windows by the way).
5) JabRef doesn't know anything about the notion of keeping an exported group in sync with the main DB, so it always warns you that you're about to overwrite the export file and you have to confirm it every time.

So in short this turns out to be a big pain to do things this way. Every time you add a new ref to the group or change an existing one you want to re-export it. There should be a way to make that far easier.

I don't even mind having to explicitly export the thing every time I make a change. I just don't want it to require 2 minutes, 50 keystrokes and 20 clicks to do it each time. I think it would be sufficient if I could set an export-to destination in a group, and then there was an item on the right click menu for that group to re-export it.

I can imagine others might want to have the ability to set the default export format too. For me I'm happy if it can just save the group as .bib.

[Billy B]

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I still agree that this would be a very useful feature to have, and probably the best way to deal with creating subset bibliographies.

But I have found another workflow which is much simpler. I just open up all.bib and this_paper.bib in separate tabs and copy the ones I need from all.bib to this_paper.bib. Jabref remembers which tabs were last open between runs too, so I never have to bother with the open or save dialog.

Of course the subset bib is now just a pure copy, so any error I discover in one .bib needs to be changed in both places.