Bibus bibliographic software

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Debian users. Please try the new packages.
Windows users. Since version 1.1.1, there is a graphical installer.

Bibus is a bibliographic database. It has been designed with OpenOffice.org in mind. The "ultimate" goal is to have an opensource bibliographic software that will allow easy formating (and reformatting) of the bibliographic index in OpenOffice.org Writer.

The first public release of Bibus was version 0.8 and was available in June 2004.
The current version is 1.1.1
Here is the current documentation.

Main Features

Compatible with two database engines: MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/> and SQLite <http://www.sqlite.org/>.
Hierarchical organization of the references with user defined keys.
Drag & drop to easily organize references.
Designed for multiuser:

You can share the database between an "unlimited" number of users.
Each user will have its own classification.
New in 1.1.0: you can have read-only and read-write users.

Powerful and easy to use search engine.
Live queries, that is searches that will update when the database change (this is simply a saved SQL query).
On-line PubMed access.
Import PubMed (Medline), EndNote/Refer, RIS records and BibTeX (new in 1.1.0).
Export to PubMed, Refer and RIS.
Connection to OpenOffice.org. You can insert references in an open OpenOffice.org text document and format the bibliography directly in Bibus. Since 1.1.0, Bibus works with OpenOffice.org 2.0
Thanks to Python and wxWidgets, Bibus should work on most modern platform (GNU/linux with gtk/gtk2; Windows; MacOS ?; etc... ?). Bibus has been tested on GNU/linux and Windows2000. Note for Windows 98 users.
Foreign language support through Unicode and gettext. For the moment, Bibus is available in English, French, Portuguese, German, spanish and chinese.

ScreenShots

Main Window
Main Window in French
Main Window in Portugese (thanks to Vítor Figueiró)
Main Window in Windows98
Bibus interacting with OpenOffice.org under WindowsXP (thanks to Leon Commandeur). Screen1. Screen2.
Searching the database
Searching PubMed on the Web
Reference editor
Reference editor in French (The database fields are not translated. This is a feature, not a bug)
Bibus inserting a reference in OpenOffice.org Writer
Dialog to define how the fields must be formated in OpenOffice.org
New in version 0.9.0. Improved style support:

Style informations
Bibliography format
Fields formatting
Fields ordering

New in version 1.0.0.

In-text Citations format

Future of Bibus

Bibus has been developed during the two years. I started this project to learn python and the wxWidgets library. As it is my first "real" software please don't use the source code as an example of good programing practices! However, feel free to read it and use it in your own software (it is under the GPL license) but don't complain if somebody tells you that your code is ugly.

If we want to make Bibus a real alternative we need to improve it in several directions:

You can define new styles. Feel free to send me your styles. I will make them available on the Web site and in the next Bibus release.
Style support is now complete in Bibus, and that it should be possible to make styles for most journal. If you think it is not possible to support your preferred journal, let me know, I will try to introduce the needed features to support it.
The documentation must be improved.
Translations. Feel free to translate Bibus in your favorite language. If possible, it would be great to make also a translation of the documentation.
Support of open formats for references (MODS) and styles.
Connection to other online databases.

Interesting links

OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org/>

Python-uno bridge
OpenOffice.org bibliographic project.

Python programming language <http://www.python.org>
MySQL database <http://www.mysql.com/>
SQLite database <http://www.sqlite.org/>
wxPython and wxWidgets libraries.
A list of bibliographic softwares.

Windows 98 users
Support for Windows98 is much better in Bibus 1.0 than in 0.8.0 and it is now perfectly usable.

Here are some remarks:

You must use wxPython2.5 with unicode support. I tested wxPythonWIN32-2.5.1.5u-Py22.
Connection with OpenOffice.org is VERY SLOW if you use TCP/IP (I mean it). It takes 20 seconds to insert the first citation! Once the connection is established it is faster but still slow. I have no idea where the problem is but presumably in Windows. Try to upgrade your system. This was tested with OpenOffice.org 1.1.1. The problem may not be present in the more recent releases.
If you can, use 'named pipe' for the connection with OpenOffice.org instead of TCP/IP. This is possible if Bibus and OpenOffice.org are run on the same machine. The connection is much faster than using TCP/IP but still slower than under GNU/linux and Windows2000.
Some functions are a bit slow. This is the case of style editing. Be patient.