If the bookmark is an alias, isn't it possible to open the file directly via
the alias, without needing to recover/construct the path? That might not be
possible, though, with the functions available in emacs.
> On 15 May 2025, at 15:37, Christiaan Hofman <cmhof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is no documentation of this format. It is basically private.I can give
> you some partial information. Basically, it is base64 encoded plist data. The
> plist is a dictionary with 2 keys: relativePath and bookmark. The
> relativePath gives the path relative to the .bib file. The bookmark is alias
> data generated by Apple, and its format is not documented. So when you get
> the(full) path (from this alias data), that is largely by accident. The only
> robust way to get the (full) path is by resolving the alias using the system
> Foundation framework (i.e. using an Objective-C or Swift program). Perhaps
> the best is to get the relative path, and also pass the .bib file path to
> your function.
>
> For instance, you could get the plist data from the command line using:
>
> echo “BDSKFILEVALUE” | base64 -D | plutil -convert xml1 -o - -
>
> And you can get the relative path using:
>
> echo “BDSKFILEVALUE” | base64 -D | plutil -extract relativePath raw -expect
> string -o - -
>
> Christiaan
>
>> On 15 May 2025, at 11:48, Alexander,J <ja...@lse.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Is there documentation describing how to decode the values of the
>> Bdsk-File-* fields, and extract the path to the file?
>>
>> I ask because I've written the following Emacs macro which, when invoked
>> while the cursor is sitting on a citation key, attempts to open the first
>> such file (if it exists) associated with that entry. At the moment, this
>> seems to work, but when I inspect the results of the Base64 decoding (by
>> visiting the "*Bibdesk Info*" buffer), there's a lot of noise in the buffer
>> and the file path appears in all lower-case... which makes me worry that
>> this macro is working largely by accident and there is a more robust way of
>> doing this.
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>> (defun open-bibdesk-file ()
>> "Extract the bdsk-file-1 field and open the file."
>> (interactive)
>> (save-window-excursion
>> ;; Use existing reftex function to locate the entry
>> (reftex-view-crossref 2)
>>
>> ;; Now we're in the bib file at the entry
>> (let (citation-key field-content)
>> ;; Find the citation key
>> (save-excursion
>> (when (re-search-backward "^@\\w+{\\([^,]+\\)," nil t)
>> (setq citation-key (match-string 1))))
>>
>> ;; Find the bdsk-file-1 field in the current entry
>> (save-excursion
>> (if (re-search-forward "bdsk-file-1\\s-*=\\s-*{\\([^}]*\\)}" nil t)
>> (progn
>> (let*
>> ((Bdsk-File-1 (match-string 1))
>> (fstr (base64-decode-string Bdsk-File-1))
>> (info-buffer (get-buffer-create "*Bibdesk Info*"))
>> path)
>> (string-match "\\(users/[- ,A-z0-9/_?]*.pdf\\)" fstr)
>> (setq path (format "/%s" (match-string 0 fstr)))
>> (with-current-buffer info-buffer
>> (erase-buffer)
>> (insert (format "path: %s" path))
>> (insert (format "\n\n%s" fstr)))
>> (if (and path (file-exists-p path))
>> (shell-command (concat "open " (shell-quote-argument
>> path)))
>> (message "File not found")))))))))
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bibdesk-users mailing list
> Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
_______________________________________________
Bibdesk-users mailing list
Bibdesk-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-users
