Re: [PATCH] BibTeX-mode: add eprint field as potential source for entry's URL

[Roland Winkler <winkler@gnu.org>]

On Sun, Dec 01 2024, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> diff --git a/lisp/textmodes/bibtex.el b/lisp/textmodes/bibtex.el
>> index 99a97c9bb8d..c77953489a7 100644
>> --- a/lisp/textmodes/bibtex.el
>> +++ b/lisp/textmodes/bibtex.el
>> @@ -1443,6 +1443,9 @@ Used by `bibtex-complete-crossref-cleanup' and `bibtex-copy-summary-as-kill'."
>>  
>>  (defcustom bibtex-generate-url-list
>>    '((("url" . ".*:.*"))
>> +    (("eprint" . ".*")
>> +     "https://arxiv.org/abs/%s"
>> +     ("eprint" ".*" 0))
>>      (("doi" . "10\\.[0-9]+/.+")
>>       "https://doi.org/%s"
>>       ("doi" ".*" 0)))
>
> Roland, any comments?

The above patch is very arXiv-specific.  All this goes beyond
old-fashioned BibTeX.  But the documentation for biblatex (current:
version 3.20 from CTAN) says in Sec. 3.14.7 "Electronic Publishing
Information" how the field "eprint" should be used in combination with a
field "eprinttype" to identify an electronically published document.
Arxiv's usage is not compatible with this.  Instead of "eprinttype"
arXiv uses a field "archivePrefix", and the field "primaryClass" used by
arXiv should probably be replaced by the optional field "eprintclass"
mentioned in the biblatex documentation.

To the best of my knowledge, neither the arXiv approach nor the different
approach suggested by the biblatex documentation have found a widespread
use in real life.

The user variable bibtex-generate-url-list can be configured to work
either way, as suggested by the OP or as suggested by the biblatex
documentation.  Here it seems to me the best solution is to keep the
default of bibtex-generate-url-list as it is now and let users configure
this variable as desired / needed.

Note also that arXiv also provides a field "url" that is already
supported by the default value of bibtex-generate-url-list.