1 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
4 <basefont size="4" color="#2F4958" face="arial" />
6 <h1>File links in JabRef</h1>
8 <p>JabRef lets you link up your
9 entries with files of any type stored on your system, as well
10 as links to the document on the web in the form of an URL or a
11 DOI identifier. Each entry can have an arbitrary number of file
12 links, and each linked file can be opened quickly from JabRef.</p>
14 <p>In BibTeX terms, the file links of an entry are encoded in a
15 single field. However, from within JabRef they appear as an
16 editable list of links accessed from the entry editor along
17 with other BibTeX fields.</p>
19 <h2>Setting up external file types</h2>
21 <p>For each file link, a
22 file type must be chosen, to determine what icon should be used
23 and what application should be called to open the file. The
24 list of file types can be viewed and edited by choosing
25 <b>Options -> Manage external file types</b>, or by clicking
26 the <b>Manage external file types</b> button in the <b>External
27 programs</b> tab of the Preferences dialog.</p>
29 <p>A file type is specified by its name, a graphical icon, a
30 file extension and an application to view the files. On
31 Windows, the name of the application can be omitted in order to
32 use Window's default viewer instead.</p>
34 <h2>Adding external links to an entry</h2>
36 <p>If the "file" field
37 is included in <a href="GeneralFields.html">General fields</a>,
38 you can edit the list of external links for an entry in the
39 <a href="EntryEditorHelp.html">Entry editor</a>. The editor
40 includes buttons for inserting, editing and removing links, as
41 well as buttons for reordering the list of links.</p>
43 <p>If you have a file within or below your file directory (set
44 up in <b>Preferences -> External programs -> External
45 file links -> Main file directory</b>) with an extension
46 matching one of the defined external file types, and a name
47 containing a BibTeX entry's BibTeX key, the file can be
48 autolinked by clicking on the <b>Auto</b> button in the entry
49 editor. The rules for which file names can be autolinked to a
50 BibTeX key can be set up in <b>Preferences -> External
51 programs -> External file links -> Use regular expression
54 <p>If you want to download a file and link to it from a BibTeX
55 entry, you can do this by clicking the <b>Download</b> button
56 in the entry editor. A dialog box will appear, prompting you to
57 enter the URL. The file will be downloaded to your main file
58 directory, named based on the entry's BibTeX key, and finally
59 linked from the entry.</p>
61 <h2>Opening external files</h2>
63 <p>There are several ways to open
64 an external file or web page. In the entry table you can select
65 an entry and use the menu choice, keyboard shortcut or the
66 right-click menu to open an entry's first external link.
67 Alternatively, if the entry table is set up to show the
68 <b>file</b> column (set up in <b>Preferences -> Entry table
69 -> Special table columns -> Show file column</b>), you
70 can click on the file icon to open an entry's first link. To
71 access any of an entry's links, click on the icon with the
72 right mouse button (or <b>Ctrl-click</b> on Max OS X) to bring
73 up a menu showing all links.</p>