Add open `--open` to also open the pdf (or containing folder) when adding it

[alex-robinson]

Here is a possible feature idea.

I have found my workflow is usually the following:

1. Download pdf from some journal website online.
2. Open the terminal and run papers add example.pdf --rename --copy.
3. Open the file browser and go look for the pdf, then open it to read it.

It would be neat if with one step I could achieve all of that, so something like:

papers add example.pdf --rename --copy --open

And --open would trigger it to open the renamed+copied pdf directly, or open the containing directory where it is located.

I realize you told me that with papers list -1, it is possible to have a clickable link, but this is not working for me in OS X, and I cannot see a way to do it.

[perrette]

Hi @alex-robinson , I made a few commits that should (at least partially) address your request.
Namely:

• papers list now has an -o, --open action (applies on the results of filtering, like --del, --edit and a few others)
• papers add now prints the new or updated bib KEY to stdout as "[Action]: [KEY]"
  That means you can now do something like:

> papers add file.pdf
New Entry: KEY
> papers list KEY --open  # or more efficiently perhaps --key KEY to restrict the search field

That can be piped as:

papers add file.pdf | cut -d: -f2 | xargs papers list --open

Here I use xargs to pass the stdout of the previous command as if it were a normal argument. Or in a bash function

function papa () {
ref=$(papers add $1 | cut -d: -f2)
papers list --key $ref --open
}

(that's more readable and contrary to xargs you can use existing aliases inside the function)

Regarding the clickable hyperlinks, I use OSC 8 Hyperlink Escape Sequences to display the hyperlink. I read that you might need a third-party emulator on MacOS, like iterm2, and you might need to enable the hyperlinks capability in the Preferences. Elsewhere I read that you can click on the link with the special apple key to open any hyperlink, not sure if that is applicable here though.

[perrette]

I close the issue as done for now, please re-open if necessary.

PS: (at the moment I'd rather not add --open to add as it does not seem straightforward to bind these two actions and the code has already grown quite large -- papers list -1 is the way to go)

[alex-robinson]

Thanks!! papers list KEY --open works great, and is far enough in this direction :).

[perrette]

In the end I think I'll add the option add --open along with at least add --edit (#62 ). There is a certain logic to it. I'm also pondering whether to display the result of papers list KEY -1 upon adding, further linking the output of papers add to the post-filtering part of papers list

[alex-robinson]

Nice idea. The flow fits. Sorry if I've opened another can of worms, but hopefully it is easy!

[perrette]

It's now in a new release also in pypi. Let's see if that brings other unintended consequences. For now I'll leave it as an undocumented feature.

[alex-robinson]

Ok, this works perfectly for me. I even now added my own alias function in my .bash_aliases file:

function papersadd() {
   $HOME/my_python_env/bin/papers add $1 --rename --copy --open
}

export -f papersadd

So, I can just call papersadd PDF_FILE, and it will rename the file following the default pattern, copy it to my default papers directory and open the pdf for me! Like magic :).