xapers(1)
NAME
xapers - personal journal article indexing system
SYNOPSIS
xapers command [args ...]
DESCRIPTION
Xapers is a personal document indexing system, geared towards academic journal articles. It provides fast search of document text and bibliographic data (synced from online libraries) and simple document and bibtex retrieval. Xapers takes as input document files (as PDF) and source identifiers. Documents are copied into a local document store (~/.xapers/docs by default) and text is extracted from the PDF and fully indexed into a Xapian database. Source identifiers are used to download document bibliographic data from online digital libraries (see SOURCES below), which are then parsed and indexed to prefixed terms in the database. The bibliographic data is also stored as bibtex in the document store for easy retrieval. Documents can be arbitrarily tagged. A curses UI is provided for simple access to documents (see the view command below). Xapers is ultimately a document indexing library, though, so development of alternate user interfaces is encouraged. Underlying Xapers is the wonderful Xapian database/search engine. See http://xapian.org/ for more information.
MAIN COMMANDS
The following are the main xapers commands. See SEARCH TERMS below for
details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
add [options] [<search-terms>]
Add a document, or update an existing document. Must specify at least
one of --file or --source. If search terms are provided they must
match exactly one document and the matching document is updated with
the newly provided information. Available options:
--source=[<sid>|<file>]
Source identifier for document. See SOURCES below. This may
also be a path to a file that contains a single bibtex entry.
--file[=<file>]
Document file (as PDF) to add. Text of document will be
extracted and indexed. A copy of the file will be placed in
the Xapers document store. If provided without path, xapers
will attempt to download file from source, assuming source
supports file downloads.
--tags=<tag>[,...]
Initial tags to apply to document. Multiple tags can be
specified, comma separated.
--prompt
Prompt user for source/file/tags, if not specified. When
prompting for source information input files are automatically
scanned for source IDs and found ids are displayed.
--view
View resulting entry in curses UI when done. See the viewP
command below for more info.
import [options] <bibtex>
Import an existing bibtex database. Each bibtex entry will be added as
a new document. If bibtex key, or any sources found in bibtex, match
an existing document, that document is instead updated (this makes the
command effectively idempotent). Any "file" fields will be parsed for
document files to add. Files can be specified as a single path, or in
Mendeley/Jabref format. Available options:
--tags=<tag>[,...]
Tags to apply to all imported documents. Multiple tags can be
specified, comma separated.
tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-terms>
Add/remove tags from documents. '--' can be used to separate tagging
operations from search terms.
search [options] <search-terms>
Search for documents in the database. Document information is printed
to stdout.
--output=[summary|bibtex|tags|sources|keys|files]
Specify document information to be output:
summary outputs a single-line summary of the documents
(default).
bibtex outputs bibtex for all documents (if available).
tags outputs all tags associated with documents.
sources outputs all sources associated with documents.
keys outputs all bibtex citation keys associated with
documents.
files outputs the full paths to all files associated with
documents.
Default is summary.
--limit=N
Limit number of results returned to N.
bibtex <search-terms>
Short for "search --output=bibtex <search-terms>".
count <search-terms>
Return a simple count of search results.
view [<search-terms>]
show [<search-terms>]
View search results in curses search UI. Documents matching search are
displayed with their bibliographic information and a short text
summary. It allows for manipulating document tags and for retrieved
for document files and source URLs for viewing (see xdg-open(1) for
more info). Initial search terms can be provided, but further searches
can be performed from within the UI. While in the UI type "?" for
available commands.
NOTE: At the moment only the top 20 search results are displayed, due
to synchronous loading restrictions. This obviously needs to be fixed.
export <directory> <search-terms>
Copy PDF files of resulting documents into <directory>, named with
document titles when available.
delete <search-terms>
Delete documents from the database. All document files will purged
from the document store.
--noprompt
Do not prompt to confirm deletion of documents.
restore
Restore a database from existing xapers root.
SOURCE COMMANDS
These commands provide access to some of the source module methods. See SOURCES below. sources List available sources. source2url <sid> [<sid>...] Parse a source identifier string and print the corresponding source URL. source2bib <sid> [<sid>...] Retrieve bibtex from source for a specified URL or source id, and write to stdout. source2file <sid> Retrieve file from source for a specified URL or source id, and write to stdout. scandoc <file> Scan a document file (PDF) for source IDs, and print and recognized source ids to stdout.
SOURCES
Sources are online databases from which document bibliographic data can
be retrieved. In Xapers, online libraries are assigned unique
prefixes. The online libraries associate unique document identifiers
to individual documents. See 'xapers sources' for a list of available
online sources.
Xapers recognizes document a source identifier, or sid, in two forms:
full URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.29.002092
sid of form <source>:<id> doi:10.1364/JOSAA.29.002092
URLs are parsed into sources and source ids when recognized, and this
information is used to retrieve bibtex from the online library
databases. The sources and sids for a given document are stored as
prefixed terms in the Xapers database (see below).
SEARCH TERMS
Xapers supports a common syntax for search terms.
Search can consist of free-form text and quoted phrases. Terms can be
combined with standard Boolean operators. All terms are combined with
a logical OR by default. Parentheses can be used to group operators,
but must be protect from shell interpretation. The string '*' will
match all documents in the database.
Additionally, the following prefixed terms are understood (where
<brackets> indicate user-supplied values):
id:<docid> Xapers document ID
author:<string> string in authors (also a:)
title:<string> string in title (also t:)
tag:<tag> specific user tag
<source>:<id> specific source id (sid)
source:<source> specific source
key:<key> specific bibtex citation key
year:<year> specific publication year (also y:)
year:<since>..<until> publication year range (also y:)
year:..<until>
year:<since>..
Publication years must be four-digit integers.
See the following for more information on search terms:
http://xapian.org/docs/queryparser.html
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior of xapers: XAPERS_ROOT Location of the Xapers document store. Defaults to "~/.xapers/docs" if not specified. XAPERS_SOURCE_PATH Path specification for location of additional custom Xapers source modules. Defaults to "~/.xapers/sources" if not specified.
CONTACT
Feel free to email the author:
Jameson Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net>
XAPERS(1)
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