[windows support] Make bib completion work on windows

[lervag]

This issue was first mentioned by @petobens here. He suggest that I make changes similar to this change in LaTeX-Box at this line.

[lervag]

I think the last commit should fix this issue. Could you test?

[petobens]

Using the following MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\textcite{
\end{document}

I get the error:

Error detected while processing function latex#complete#omnifunc..latex#complete#bibtex..<SNR>174_bibtex_search:
line   26:
E484: Can't open file tmpfile.bbl

[petobens]

I manage to partially fix this. It won't work with the MWE that uses \addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib} but it works if there is a test.bib file in the same directory as the current file:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\begin{document}
\textcite{
\end{document}

I hope you can help me fix the general case (does it work on Unix)?

[lervag]

The first MWE won't work because the bibtex_search function does not know where biblatex-examples.bib is.

The mechanism behind the completion is really very simple: We create a temporary aux file that includes every citation from every bib file, then we use bibtex with a custom style file to generate a bbl file that we finally parse to get the candidates.

I now notice that the parsing of the bib files with s:bibtex_find_bibs modify the found files to yield full paths. This is "good" in the sense that it makes things work when the tex project is "complicated". However, it is probably not very good since it breaks the latex internal "knowledge" of "special" bib files (such as this biblatex-examples.bib).

I just tested the example after using relative paths instead of full paths, and that seems to make things work. I'll make the change, since it seems to work. If someting breaks for complicated projects, then I'll investigate further.

[lervag]

Fixed by 55a35fc.

[petobens]

Thanks! This in fact fixes the example but there is a scenario that still has issues. Maybe it falls under what you've called "complicated projects" but I think it is pretty simple and quite common. Let a_main_file.tex be

\documentclass{book}
\input{preamble.tex}
\begin{document}
  \include{bar}
\end{document}

where, preamble.tex is

\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{test.bib}

bar.tex is

\section{Bar section}
\label{sec:bar_section}

and test.bib is

@Article{foo10,
  author  = {Foo},
  title   = {Bar},
  journal = {journal name},
  year    = {2010},
  volume  = {volume number},
  number  = {number},
  pages   = {page range}
}

If you write \textcite{ in bar.tex then no completion happens.

Additional question regarding the mechanism to build de bbl file: can bibtex be invoked only when the bib file (in my example test.bib) changes? i.e is it possible to cache the bibcompletion candidates rather than generating a bbl file every time?

[lervag]

Ah, interesting. Could you try to set g:latex_complete_recursive_bib = 1?

[lervag]

Regarding your second question: Yes, that would be possible. However, it seems to complicate things, so I'm curious if it is worth the effort. Do you have any performance issues or similar?

[petobens]

Setting g:latex_complete_recursive_bib = 1 indeed fixes the issue. I missed that from the docs. I'm sorry about that. Thanks!

[petobens]

Regarding the second question, I have no performance issues at all. If it complicates things then just forget about my question. I only asked it because I noticed that you recently improved the TOC and thought that maybe if it wasn't too much trouble you were willing to also improve bibcompletion. Thank you for the great help!

[lervag]

No problem!