How can I apply `bibtex-fill-entry` to the whole buffer?

Question

When I run bibtex-fill-entry it formats the current entry block where the cursor is at. Note that bibtex-fill-entry (C-c C-q) Fill current BibTeX entry. So I have to traverse all the entries to align them one by one which is time consuming.

Instead I want to apply bibtex-fill-entry for all fields in the bibtex buffer, after each save after-save-hook. How can I apply bibtex-fill-entry to entire buffer (all the entries)?

Here cursor is at the beginning of the title = {Clique}, line. When I do M-x bibtex-fill-entry it only aligns the first entry. I also want to align second entry (considering all entries in the buffer).

@electronic{clique,
        title          = {Clique},
  url          = {https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/225/},
}

@electronic{geth,
          title        = {Geth},
  url          = {https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/geth/},
}

Related: How to make emacs align and indent a bibtex entry?

You should be able to create a keyboard macro that does `bibtex-fill-entry` and then `bibtex-next-entry` to get to the next one. Then you can repeat the keyboard macro say 1000 times to do all of them. However, in my experiment `M-}` which is bound to `bibtex-next-entry` does not seem to do anything, but you might want to see if it works for you (I didn't try very hard to make it work). — NickD, Oct 28 '22 at 15:49
@NickD That's a smart solution. I get hard time coding and debugging in lisp. But I will try to implemet what you recommended by looking for solution that repeat keyboard macros from beginning of the buffer. — alper, Oct 28 '22 at 20:01

NickD · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-29T01:34:00.093

2

EDIT: There is bibtex-reformat which will reformat the whole buffer (or the selected region), so there is no need to define a macro: M-x bibtex-reformat will do it all.

[Obsolete answer] Go to the beginning of the buffer and create a keyboard macro that does bibtex-fill-entry (bound to C-c C-q) and then bibtex-next-entry (bound to M-}):

C-x ( C-c C-q M-} C-x )

That defines an anonymous macro that you can execute once with C-x e to try it out. You should be at the beginning of the third entry at this point, so all you have to do is repeat the invocation of the macro: C-u 1000 C-x e. That will repeat it 1000 times; if you have more entries, just do it again (maybe with a larger number).

The reason that M-} was ineffective in my case, was that @electronic was not a known BibTeX entry type. When I changed it to @article, it worked. I presume there is a way to add new entry types to bibtex, but I haven't gone down that path.

edited Oct 29 '22 at 01:34

answered Oct 28 '22 at 22:52

NickD

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Can we define the macro in the config file by default? – alper Oct 28 '22 at 23:59
There is no need for a macro - see the edit. – NickD Oct 29 '22 at 01:34
To make `bibtex-reformat` work , I have to select complete buffer using `mark-whole-buffer` than apply `bibtex-reformat` right? Could this combined in a single keybinding? – alper Oct 29 '22 at 11:38
1

I don't think so: if you don't have a region defined, it defaults to the whole buffer. There is no need for a single keybinding. – NickD Oct 29 '22 at 17:18

How can I apply `bibtex-fill-entry` to the whole buffer?

1 Answers1