PaperTrail Citation Management System

Current version: 0.5.0 (alpha)

What is PaperTrail?
PaperTrail is a system for sorting and maintaining academic-style citations, written in C++ and making use of the gtkmm library for graphical functions. Its design elements were inspired in part by BibDesk, a citation system built for OS X; by various applications written in GTK+ (Rhythmbox music player being the most prominent) and by my frustration at finding a good system for tracking the spread of ideas through papers. This project has grown out of the literature review process for my dissertation work, which has the added benefit of assembling a relational data set from regular use.

PaperTrail supports the importation of citations in standard form -- a straight text citation list from the end of a paper -- using regular expression matching.

Why use PaperTrail over, say, BibTeX or Endnote?
While PaperTrail uses an XML file format to store records, PaperTrail has the ability to seamlessly import BibTeX-style .bib files, and export records in BibTeX format as well. So you can continue using BibTex as much as you desire. Endnote is not free software. PaperTrail is cross-platform and licensed under the GPL version 2, so you can feel free to share it.

Where can I find the supporting files?
In order to run on Windows, you need to install the runtime packages for GTK+ and gtkmm; running the installation for gtkmm will give you the option to obtain the GTK+ runtime files automatically.
If for some reason it To install and run on GNU/Linux systems, download the source and install GTK+ and gtkmm with their required dependencies, then run the makefile.

Downloading PaperTrail
Current source: PaperTrail 0.5.0, current as of November 28, 2009.
Current binaries: (Eternally) in preparation.

What's coming up?
-A network-like visualization of the citation network (in the currently unoccupied upper-right-hand corner). -More application friendliness. This is a prototype, after all.