Alternative serialization format as core data file (e.g. YAML in addition to BibTeX)

[mjfs]

Alternative serialization format support (e.g. YAML in addition to BibTeX)

Probably many use cases where JabRef's data file is used include Pandoc. Although it is common to use BibTeX as input into pandoc-citeproc, YAML serialized BibTeX (citeproc YAML) is also an option. When using Pandoc's flavour of markdown, YAML is also the format of the metadata block.

It would be fantastic if JabRef could read and write YAML serialized BibTeX. In addition YAML is also less cumbersome to deal with when one needs to do some manual editing of the data file.

Furthermore by supporting YAML there is also a possibility of directly copy pasting selected references from JabRef data file into the markdown's metadata segment (in addition to the possibility of using external references file exclusively).

Bellow is an example of currently the only JabRef's option and under it what would be great to see JabRef also supporting.

Original in BibTeX:

% Encoding: UTF-8
@Misc{id_doc,
    author = {{John Doe}},
    title  = {{Doc Title}},
    date   = {2020-10-03},
    url    = {http://www.example.com}
}

Converted to YAML that is recognized by Pandoc / pandoc-citeproc:

---
references:
- id: id_doc
  type: no-type
  author:
  - literal: John Doe
  title: Doc Title
  issued: [[2020,10,3]]
  URL: http://www.example.com
...

[Siedlerchr]

Thanks for your suggestion. JabRef is based on bibtex and therefore bibtex/biblatex will always be the main format. However, those functionality could be made avaiable as importer/exporter. JabRef support already several export and import formats.

With JabRef's custom exporter capabilitles it should also be possible to manually build the format for the yaml exporter.
https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/tree/master/src/main/resources/resource/layout

[tobiasdiez]

@mjfs with the pullrequest #7007 by @joethei YAML export will be possible in the next version. It would be nice if you could assist @joethei and other users by adding a documentation for working with markdown and bibtex at docs.jabref.org. For example, describe how it works with pandoc-citeproc and also with the new YAML export.

By the way, I can strongly recommend Zettlr for scientific markdown documents. It has built-in support for bibtex citations!