Version history

Version 0.24.0

(released on January 17, 2021)

This is the last version that supports Python 2. The next version will require Python 3.6 or above.

• Added support for sup and sub tags to LaTeX and Markdown backends.

• Added support for @online entries and the urldate field.

• Restored compatibility with Python 2.

• Fixed tests on Windows.

• Fixed bugs in the example plugin.

• Fixed bad get_default_encoding() call.

Thanks to Matthias Troffaes for his contributions!

Version 0.23.0

(released on October 12, 2020)

• Reimplemented OrderedCaseInsensitiveDict using collections.OrderedDict (so it has a __delitem__).

• unsrt.py now supports type when formatting phdthesis.

• Added from_string() to pybtex.database.BibliographyData.

• Added from_string() and to_string() to pybtex.database.Entry.

• Added indentation to __repr__ in pybtex.database.BibliographyData and pybtex.database.Entry.

• Preserve order in pybtex.utils.OrderedCaseInsensitiveDict.__repr__().

• Fixed entries with duplicate keys being removed during sorting.

• Fixed handling of duplicate person fields

• Use ElementTree instead of the deprecated cElementTree.

• Import base classes from collections.abc instead of collections.

• Use __iter__ instead of deprecated Element.getchildren().

Thanks to David Chiang, Jerry James, Jannik Schürg, Nathaniel Starkman, and Matthias Troffaes for their fixes and improvements!

Version 0.22.2

(released on January 17, 2019)

• Fixed compatibility with Python 2 and older versions of Python 3.

Version 0.22.1

(released on January 16, 2019)

• Fixed non-working --backend option with pybtex -l python.

Version 0.22.0

(released on November 18, 2018)

• Fixed handling of duplicate fields in .bib biles. Thanks, Jannik Schürg!

• BibTeX parser is now up to 10% faster on some files. Thanks, Fabrice Benhamouda!

• Fixed parsing of names with \~ characters.

• Fixed formatting proceedings without an editor field in unsrt.py.

• In case of too many braces in a BibTeX string, PybtexSyntaxError is now raised instead of RecursionError.

• Dropped 2to3, made the code compatible with both Python 2 and 3 with Six.

• Moved tests outside of the pybtex package.

• Fixed searching in docs with recent versions of Sphinx.

• API: renamed bibtex.BibTeXEntryIterator to bibtex.LowLevelParser for clarity.

• API: removed confusing usage of Person.text in tempate.names.

• API: Entry.fields does not automagically look for cross-referenced entries anymore.

Version 0.21

(released on January 20, 2017)

• BibTeX writer now uses latexcodec to encode characters that are not directly supported by the output encoding. Thanks, Hong Xu!

• HTML backend: {braced stings} are now wrapped with <span class="bibtex-protected"> to enable custom CSS styling.

• unsrt.py: DOI, PubMed and Arxiv links now use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

• unsrt.py: URLs with percent characters are now formatted correctly.

• unsrt.py: short page / volume / chapter numbers are now joined with a non-breaking space, like in BibTeX.

• unsrt.py: inbook now uses the editor field if the author field is missing, like in BibTeX.

• unsrt.py: the words “volume” and “pages” in the beginning of the sentence are now capitalized, like in BibTeX.

• unsrt.py: removed unnecessary period between the book title and the comma in inbook.

Version 0.20.1

(released on March 17, 2016)

• LaTeX backend: fix encoding tilde ("~") characters with newer versions of latexcodec.

• Fix splitting names with escaped space ("\ ") characters.

Version 0.20

(released on March 10, 2016)

• YAML reader and writer now preserve the order of bibliography entries.

• Improved URL formatting in pythonic styles.

• Built-in pythonic styles now support the ISBN field.

• Pythonic styles now treat LaTeX braces correctly:

  • case conversion does not affect {braced substrings},

  • braces are stripped from non-LaTeX output: "{P}ython" becomes "Python".

• Pythonic styles now use latexcodec to decode LaTeX markup. For example, "Schr\"odinger" is now correctly rendered as "Schrödinger" in HTML or plain text.

Thanks to Hong Xu for his contributions!

Version 0.19

(released on October 26, 2015)

• Added Markdown output format (contributed by Jorrit Wronski).

• Incorrectly formatted author and editor names now result in warnings instead of errors, unless --strict mode is enabled.

• Fixed HTML escaping.

• Fixed parsing nested .aux files.

• Fixed splitting names separated by non-lowercase " and ".

• Fixed line numbers in error messages when parsing strings with DOS/Windows line breaks.

• Fixed compatibility with BibTeX when parsing certain weird “von” names.

• Removed excessive trailing newline from .bib output.

• Text wrapping now works exactly as in BibTeX.

• Added new API for reading and writing bibliography data.

• Pythonic styles: reworked and extended the rich text API.

• Pythonic styles: added strong, i, b, tt tags, renamed the old emph tag to em.

• Pythonic styles: the author_year_title style now returns "" instead of None (fixes unorderable types error in Python 3).

• Ported the documentation to Sphinx.

Thanks to Jorrit Wronski and Matthias Troffaes for their fixes and improvements!

Version 0.18

(released on July 6, 2014)

• Pybtex is now fully case-insensitive (like BibTeX). As a consequence, IEEEtran styles now work correctly.

• Added --preserve-case option to pybtex-convert (default behavior is to converted all identifiers to lower case).

• An error is reported if two citations have the same key but different case, like in BibTeX. (Example: ddt1999 and DDT1999).

• Fixed parsing unused bibliography entries with strings containing @ characters.

• entry.max$ constant is now set to 250, global.max$ is set to 20000, like in BibTeX.

• Added --strict option to pybtex-convert and pybtex-format (turns warning into errors).

• Strict mode is now enabled by default when using pybtex as a library (exceptions are raised on all errors instead of just printing warnings to stderr).

  Non-strict error handling is still enabled when using pybtex from the command line, for compatibility with BibTeX. Use --strict option if you don’t like this.

• Added missing pybtex-format manpage.

Version 0.17

(released on March 10, 2014)

• Added pybtex-format utility for formatting bibliography files as HTML, LaTeX, and other supported human-readable formats.

• Added --strict command line option to pybtex (all warnings become errors).

• Added alpha label style, and alpha and unsrtalpha formatting styles.

• Added support for url, eprint, doi, and pubmed fields in unsrt style.

• Names with hyphens are now abbreviated correctly (“Jean-Baptiste” becomes “J.-B.”).

• width$ now uses cmr10 font metrics, like in BibTeX. Non-latin characters are also supported.

• Pythonic style engine now supports @preamble commands.

• Warning on missing fields are now more human-readable.

• When writing BibTeX files, put entry key on the same line with entry type. Fixes warnings in Jabref.

• When using multiple .bib files, macros defined in earlier files are available in subsequent ones (like in BibTeX).

• Fixed parsing .bst files with lines consisting of a single % character.

• Fixed sorting entries without author in author_year_title sorting style.

• Fixed broken CaseInsensitiveDict.get().

• CaseInsensitiveDict is now pickleable.

• Added support for registering plugins at runtime with pybtex.plugin.register_plugin() - useful for using pybtex as a library.

Many thanks to Matthias C. M. Troffaes for his numerous fixes and improvements!

Version 0.16

(released on March 17, 2012)

• BibTeX .bib and .bst parsers were completely rewritten. They are now much faster and more BibTeX-compatible.

• Syntax errors and undefined strings in .bib files now result in warnings instead of errors, like in BibTeX.

• Unused entries in .bib files are now skipped, like in BibTeX.

• The case of entry keys is now preserved (in previous versions they were converted to lowercase).

• Pythonic style engine now supports sorting.

• Pythonic style engine: fixed nested optional() blocks.

• Fixed parsing of some names with a Last part but no von part.

• Fixed processing of brace-level-one “special characters” in purify$ BibTeX built-in function.

• Added proper error messages on encoding errors in .bib files.

• The default encoding is now UTF-8 on all platforms.

• pybtex-convert now preserves the order of entries in BibTeX and BibTeXML files.

The following changes were contributed by Matthias C. M. Troffaes:

• Fixed first_of behavior when non-empty child is followed by a child that has a missing field.

• Fixed crossref lookups when key is not lower case.

• Completed unsrt and plain python styles: they now contain all entry types.

• Added doctree backend for rendering into a tree of docutils nodes.

• Added support for non-string backends.

Version 0.15

(released on February 1, 2011)

• Changed license from GPL-3 to MIT.

• Added support for setuptools plugins.

• BibTeX parser: fixed whitespace normalization in concatenated strings.

• BibTeX parser: when parsing multiple BibTeX files, macros defined in earlier files are now available to all subsequent files, like in BibTeX.

• BibTeX .bst interpreter now prints warnings on missing entries, like BibTeX, instead of raising a KeyError.

• call.type$ BibTeX built-in function now uses default.entry for unknown entry types, like in BibTeX.

• substring$ now accepts start=0 and returns an empty string.

• change.case$: fixed incorrect formatting of strings starting with special characters with "t" format.

• Fixed abbreviation of names starting with special characters or non-alphabetic characters.

• Fixed incorrect entry order and duplicated entries with \nocite{*}.

• Added more detailed error messages for already defined variables in .bst files.

Version 0.14.1

(released on September 30, 2010)

• Added missing custom_fixers directory to the tarball — needed only for converting the sources to Python 3.

Version 0.14

(released on September 20, 2010)

• BibTeX writer: fixed quoting " (double quote) characters.

• BibTeX parser now produces human-readable error messages on unread macros.

• Added error messages on missing data in .aux files.

• Improved performance on very long name lists.

• Added support for Python 3.

Version 0.13.2

(released on February 26, 2010)

• BibTeX parser: fixed a bug with parsing strings containing braces, like "Error in {DNA}".

Version 0.13.1

(released on February 18, 2010)

• Fixed ImportError: No module named kpathsea errors. One of the source files was missing from pybtex-0.13.tar.bz2 for some strange reason. Sorry about that. ;)

Version 0.13

(released on February 14, 2010)

• Implemented --min-crossrefs option.

• All command line options of the original BibTeX are not supported.

• Pybtex now respects BSTINPUTS, BIBINPUTS and TEXMFOUTPUT environment variables.

• BibTeX bibliography parser now strips excessive whitespace from fields, like BibTeX does.

Version 0.12

(released on November 21, 2009)

• Pybtex now works correctly with \input{filename} in LaTeX files.

• Added a proper change.case$ BibTeX function instead of a stub.

• Added -e/--encoding command line option.

• Fixed non-working --bibtex-encoding option.

• Added proper error messages on missing plugins, file IO errors, some BibTeX interpreter errors, etc.

• Fallback to backslash-encoding when printing messages to the console - to make them printable regardless of the locale.

Version 0.11

(released on September 7, 2009)

• Made text.lentgh$ and text.prefix$ BibTeX built-in functions treat braces and TeX special characters properly (like the original BibTeX functions do).

• Changed purify$ to replace ties and hyphens by spaces.

• Fixed a bug in substring$ with negative start values.

• Fixed .bst file grammar to allow underscores in identifiers.

• BibTeX name parser: ties are now treated as whitespace when splitting name parts.

• Implemented BibTeX-like text wrapping. The resulting .bbl output should now be byte-for-byte identical to that of BibTeX in most cases.

Version 0.10

(released on August 24, 2009)

• Added support for multiple bibliography databases.

• Pythonic bibliography formatter: added helper functions to simplify writing BibTeX-like name formatting styles in Python. Added a tool for automatic conversion of BibTeX {ll}{, ff}-like patterns into Python.

• BibTeX parser: added missing characters to the caracter set of the valid identifiers.

• BibTeX parser: a comma is now allowed between the last field and the closing brace.

• BibTeX name parser: when splitting name parts into words, whitespace at brace level > 0 is now ignored.

• BibTeX name parser: fixed parsing of single-word lowercase names and complex von names, like in “Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen”.

• Fixed broken --label-style and --name-style options.

• Added (autogenerated) manpages.

• Added this changelog.

Version 0.9

(released on August 17, 2009)

• Implemented \citation{*}.

• Implemented crossrefs.

• BibTeX .bib parser now supports newlines inside strings.

• Fixed: .bib filename from .aux file was ignored.

• Fixed incorrect argument passing to codecs.open().

• Fixed incorrect whitespace handling in the name parsing code.

Version 20090402

(released on February 04, 2009)

• Fixed yet more encoding-related bugs.

• Cleaned up some old nasty code, updated the documentation, added more tests.

Version 20080918

(released on September 18, 2008)

• Added HTML backend. The pythonic bibliography formatter can now produce LaTeX, HTML, and plaintext.

• BibTeXML writer now indents the resulting XML.

• Removed the dependency on external elementtree.

• Improved the interface of the pybtex-convert script. It is just convert foo.bib foo.yaml now.

• Fixed several bugs in the BibTeX interpreter.

• Fixed several encoding-related bugs.

Version 20070513

(released on May 13, 2007)

• Added an interpreter for the BibTeX stack language. Pybtex now supports BibTeX style files.

• Added a YAML bibliography format (both input and output).

• Improved processing of names with {braces}.

• Added support for @preamble to both BibTeX parser and writer.

• Introduced an experimental pythonic template language to make bibliography formatting easier with a more functional-oriented approach.

• Added support for incollection entries to the experimentl pythonic bibliography style.

• cElementTree is now used for BibTeXML parsing, if present.

• Added some documentation files (finally).

Version 20060416

(released on April 16, 2006)

• Added BibTeX and BibTeXML formatters for bibliography databases. Added a database conversion tool.

• Improved name splitting in the BibTeX parser.

• Locale encoding is now used by default.

• Added richtext.Check class to simplify formatting of optional bibliography fields.

• Added support for booklet and inbook entry types to the experimentl pythonic bibliography style.

Version 20060402

(released on April 2, 2006)

• Added initial Unicode support and input/output encodings.

• Introduced output backends to make bibliography styles markup-independent. Added LaTeX and Plaintext backends.

• Improved BibTeXML parser, add support for pre-parsed names (<bibtex:first>, <bibtex:middle> and so on).

• Added default macros for month names to the BibTeX parser.

• Added an experimental richtext.Phrase (former Pack class (former Packer class)) class to make creating sentences and delimited lists easier.

• Added experimental support for pluggable name and label styles to the pythonic bibliogrphy formatter.

• Made Pybtex work on Windows by renaming aux.py to auxfile.py. Duh.

Version 0.1

(released on March 4, 2006)

Initial release. This version already has a basic BibTeX .bib parser, BibTeXML parser and a proof-of-concept pythonic bibliography formatter.