Comparisons

Citar in context

Citar started off as a package called bibtex-actions, which was a front-end to bibtex-completion. As such, it was very similar to ivy-bibtex and helm-bibtex, except using completing-read behind-the-scenes, and optimized for use with the new suite of packages: notably Embark and Consult.

Over time, the package has become increasingly decoupled from bibtex-completion, so it is now independent of it.

In comparison to those package, citar:

• focuses on org-cite for org, and pandoc for markdown
• while offering no hard dependency on it, provides robust support for Embark to provide contextual actions in the minibuffer and buffer
• an "adapter" system for different major modes that integrates with the Embark support, to provide consistent functionality (including embark-act at point) across those different modes
• favors built-in functions and libraries like seq, dolist and string over separate packages like dash
• decouples formatting from caching from cache updating from actions, and so is more flexible from a development POV

In comparison to org-ref, citar:

• per above, is not limited to org, and in org, only supports org-cite
• does not, and will not, support cross-references
• does not provide biblio etc lookup functionality (and likely won't; see Embark for example of how to use embark-collect to do something similar)

Summary of diverse Emacs bibliographic and citation packages

Frontends

• citar (frontend, latex/markdown/org, uses org-cite for org, based on parsebib)
• ivy-bibtex, helm-bibtex, consult-bibtex (frontends to bibtex-completion, latex/markdown/org and more, does not currently provide org-cite processors)
• bibtex-completion (middleware, based on parsebib and biblio)
• org-ref (frontend, only org, does not use org-cite, based on bibtex-completion/parsebib/citeproc)
• org-ref-cite (org-ref citation support rewritten for org-cite; unclear future)
• org-roam-bibtex (org-roam/org-ref integration)
• ebib (bibtex/biblatex editor without having to edit the raw .bib files)

Parsing/formatting of bibliographic databases

• citeproc (formatter for csl. Dependency of org-cite oc-csl.el)
• citeproc-org (citeproc integration for org, replaced by org-cite oc.el and org-ref v3)
• parsebib (parser for bibtex, biblatex, csl-json, small library)
• org-cite oc.el (replaces citeproc-org)

Retrieval of bibtex entries

• biblio, biblio-core, biblio-bibsonomy (retrieval of bibtex entries from various web sources)
• bibretrieve, bibslurp, gscholar-bibtex, empos/pyopl (retrieval of bibtex entries from various web sources)