Papis

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Papis is a powerful and highly extensible CLI document and bibliography manager.

|first_glance|

With Papis, you can search your library for books and papers, add documents and notes, import and export to and from other formats, and much much more. Papis uses a human-readable and easily hackable .yaml file to store each entry's bibliographical data. It strives to be easy to use while providing a wide range of features. And for those who still want more, Papis makes it easy to write scripts that extend its features even further.

Features

• Add documents and automatically fetch their metadata.
• Search by author, title, tags, and so on.
• Synchronize your library with whatever software you're already using.
• Share your documents with colleagues without having to force some proprietary service onto them.
• Import your data from other bibliography managers.
• Export to BibTeX and other formats.
• Integrate with your editor with plugins for (Neo)vim and Emacs.
• TUIs make it easy to get a quick overview of your library.
• Use the web app when the CLI doesn't quite cut it (for example on your tablet).
• Hacking Papis is easy! Use the API to easily create your own custom python scripts.

Quick tour

Install Papis with pip (or one of the alternatives <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html>__):

.. code:: bash

pip install papis

Let's download a couple of documents:

.. code:: bash

wget http://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/pdf/libc.pdf
wget http://www.ams.org/notices/201304/rnoti-p434.pdf

We can now add these to the (default) library. This will automatically query for the metadata associated with the doi.

.. code:: bash

papis add --from doi 10.1090/noti963 rnoti-p434.pdf

|add|

You can also use --set to add information:

.. code:: bash

papis add libc.pdf --set author "Sandra Loosemore" \
                   --set title "GNU C reference manual" \
                   --set year 2018 \
                   --set tags programming \
                   --confirm

Now open an attached file or edit an entry:

.. code:: bash

papis open
papis edit

|edit|

Or export them to bibtex:

.. code:: bash

papis export --all --format bibtex > mylib.bib

|bibtex_export|

Papis also includes a web app that you can start with:

.. code:: bash

papis serve

You can then open the indicated address (http://localhost:8888) in your browser.

|web_app|

All papis commands come with help messages:

.. code:: bash

papis -h      # General help
papis add -h  # Help with a specific command

Installation & setup

Information about installation and setup can be found in the docs <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>__, for example in the these sections:

• Installation <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html>__
• Configuration <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration.html>__
• Import <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/importing.html>__
• Editor integration <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/editors.html>__

Questions?

The docs <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>__ cover Papis' features and discuss possible work flows. If you still have questions, head to our GitHub discussions <https://github.com/papis/papis/discussions>__ — we're more than happy to help. If you've found a bug, please open an issue <https://github.com/papis/papis/issues>__ and help make Papis even better!

Reviews and blog posts

• Blog post <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/blog/posts/getting-paper-references-with-papis/>__ about getting a paper's references with papis explore.
• Blog post <http://nicolasshu.com/zotero_and_papis.html>__ about using Papis with Zotero and Syncthing.
• GNU/Linux Switzerland wrote about Papis <https://gnulinux.ch/papis-dokumentenverwaltung-fuer-die-kommandozeile>__ (in German).
• The folks at OSTechNix wrote a review of Papis <https://www.ostechnix.com/papis-command-line-based-document-bibliography-manager/>__.
• A review of Papis <https://ubunlog.com/papis-administrador-documentos/>__ by Ubunlog (in Spanish).

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md <https://github.com/papis/papis/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md>__ for general rules and HACKING.md <https://github.com/papis/papis/blob/main/HACKING.md>__ for additional code-related information. We encourage you to also check out, contribute to, or even help maintain the other projects in the Papis ecosystem mentioned below :wink:.

The Papis ecosystem

Papis has grown over the years and there are now a number of projects that extend Papis' features or integrate it with other software.

.. list-table:: :widths: 33 67 :header-rows: 1

• • Project
  • Maintained by
• • papis (core) <https://github.com/papis/papis-rofi/>__
  • Alejandro Gallo <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/>, Julian Hauser <https://github.com/jghauser>, Alex Fikl <https://github.com/alexfikl>__
• • papis-rofi <https://github.com/papis/papis-rofi/>__
  • Etn40ff <https://github.com/Etn40ff>__
• • papis-dmenu <https://github.com/papis/papis-dmenu>__
  • you?
• • papis-vim <https://github.com/papis/papis-vim>__
  • you?
• • papis.nvim <https://github.com/jghauser/papis.nvim>__
  • Julian Hauser <https://github.com/jghauser>__
• • papis-emacs <https://github.com/papis/papis.el>__
  • Alejandro Gallo <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/>__
• • papis-zotero <https://github.com/papis/papis-zotero>__
  • lennonhill <https://github.com/lennonhill>__
• • papis-libgen <https://github.com/papis/papis-zotero>__
  • you?
• • papis-firefox <https://github.com/papis/papis-firefox>__
  • wavefrontshaping <https://github.com/wavefrontshaping>__

Related software

Papis isn't the only fish in the pond. You might also be interested in:

• bibman <https://codeberg.org/KMIJPH/bibman>__ (opensource)
• cobib <https://github.com/mrossinek/cobib>__ (opensource)
• jabref <https://www.jabref.org/>__ (opensource)
• Mendeley <https://www.mendeley.com/>__ (proprietary)
• pubs <https://github.com/pubs/pubs/>__ (opensource)
• Xapers <https://finestructure.net/xapers/>__ (opensource)
• Zotero <https://www.zotero.org/>__ (opensource)

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.. |first_glance| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/first_glance.gif .. |edit| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/edit.gif .. |bibtex_export| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/bibtex_export.gif .. |add| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/add.gif .. |web_app| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/web_app.jpg