Moving on from Polymode

Previously, I have written about using Polymode with org-mode and BibTeX. At the end of that piece, I wrote about finding my setup a little brittle, which turned out to be a problem. After trying to work with Polymode, I gave up because I found it inconvenient

So, what was the solution? My bibliography file is now treated as org-mode by Emacs and contains BibTeX source blocks, as in the following example:

** Butler 2022 Considerations and Challenges for the Adoption of Open Source Components in Software-Intensive Businesses :unpublished:
   :properties:
   :custom_id: Butler:2020:x
   :created: [2021-11-28 Fri 08:51]
   :source: 
   :end:
   :logbook:
   :end:
   
*** Abstract
#+begin_quote
Component-Based Software Development is a conventional way of working for 
software-intensive businesses and Open Source Software (OSS) components 
are frequently considered by businesses for adoption and inclusion in 
software products. Previous research has found a variety of practices used 
to support the adoption of OSS components, including formally specified 
processes and less formal, developer-led approaches, and that the practices 
used continue to develop. Evolutionary pressures identified include the 
proliferation of available OSS components and increases in the pace of 
software development as businesses move towards continuous integration and 
delivery. We investigate work practices used in six software-intensive 
businesses in the primary and secondary software sectors to understand 
current approaches to OSS component adoption and the challenges businesses 
face establishing effective work practices to evaluate OSS components. We find 
businesses have established processes for evaluating OSS components and 
communities that support more complex and nuanced considerations of the cost 
and risks of component adoption alongside matters such as licence compliance 
and functional requirements. We also found that the increasing pace and 
volume of software development within some businesses provides pressure to 
continue to evolve software evaluation processes. 
#+end_quote

*** Notes




*** Bibtex
#+begin_src bibtex :tangle ~/texmf/bibtex/bib/local/main/inbox.bib
@Article{Butler:2022:x,
 author = {Butler, Simon and Gamalielsson, Jonas and Lundell, Bj{\"o}rn and Brax, Christoffer and Mattsson, Anders and Gustavsson, Tomas and Feist, Jonas and Kvarnström, Bengt and L{\"o}nroth, Erik},
  title = 	 {Considerations and Challenges for the Adoption of Open Source Components in Software-Intensive Businesses},
  year = 	 {2022},
  note =         {To appear},
  journal = {Journal of Systems and Software},
}
#+end_src

When the cursor is in a BibTeX source block, C-c ' invokes org-edit-special and opens a new window in BibTeX mode. Generally, I don’t work in BibTeX mode, but it is available when I need it, and this solution doesn’t have the overhead of using Polymode. There are still some niggles, but this solution is an improvement, for me at least; and for the moment.