Suggestion: Allow orb PDF scrapper to be run while just visiting a PDF file

[rhstanton]

After a bit of experimentation, I'm now a big fan of orb PDF scrapper. It can save huge amounts of time retyping BibTeX entries. But right now, to use it I (think I) need to be in an org document related to a paper already in my database. What if I'm just exploring the Web and come across a paper that I don't necessarily care about but it's got a great bibliography. What's the best way to grab the bibliography? I can do (some of) this by using anystyle at the command line, but it would be really nice to be able to do it within Emacs using orb PDF scrapper. Thanks!

[myshevchuk]

ORB PDF Scrapper was initially designed to facilitate collection and interconnection of Org-roam literature notes. At some point (see #143) I realized it would be nice to have it as a standalone package but haven't managed to put my hands on it so far. And honestly can't say when I'll be able to. ORB is by no means a conceptually finished Emacs package yet, hence the current version 0.6, but it is de facto in the maintenance mode. I spare my time for it to fix bugs and make small improvements such as BibDesk integration, and even the latter took like 2 weeks now. I hope I'll be able to devote more efforts to it somewhen – and splitting the PDF Scrapper into its own package is clearly on the roadmap – but can't really give any time estimates.

As a somewhat clumsy temporary solution, I'd suggest you consider keeping all the papers you don't care about in a separate BibTeX file, which you can add to the bibtex-completion-bibliography list so it works seamlessly in Emacs and then keep the respective Org-roam notes in a separate file or as multiple files in a separate subdirectory. To declutter Org-roam database from such files you can use org-roam-file-exclude-regexp or per-note ROAM_EXCLUDE property.

[rhstanton]

What you've already put together is incredibly helpful, so thank you! Another way to handle this for now is just to use anystyle manually at the command line using anystyle -f bib. Not as good, but still a lot better than typing it all out by hand.