Directly accessing PDFs from BibSonomy in TeXlipse

When writing some article in LaTeX you use a statement like this \cite{becker2016sparktrails} to cite your references. Yet, especially when putting together your related work, you need to have a look at the article again. Dependent on how you manage your references, this includes a more or less cumbersome search for the the publication and the PDF associated with the corresponding Bib-Key (becker2016sparktrails).

Now, in case you are managing your publications and references with BibSonomy diligently uploading your PDFs (e.g., using the Chrome plug-in BibSonomy Scholar) in combination with the LaTeX editor TeXlipse, we came up with a little shortcut:

Mark the Bib-Tex Key, hit F9 (or any shortcut), and the PDF will open in your favorite PDF viewer.

To achieve this, we use a Python 3 script to download our references and take advantage of the External Tool configuration and corresponding shortcuts provided by Eclipse. This is a little hacky, but it works nicely in most cases. With a little more programming, this approach can probably be integrated more tightly and even work with other editors as well (such as TeXstudio or TeXmaker).

For details, please see this blog entry by Martin Becker.

Have fun writing your manuscript :D
Martin