import-citation-cff: Import CFF metadata into LaTeX

With import-citation-cff, you don't need to write your metadata twice.

Requirements

• LuaLaTeX, or pdfLaTeX with --shell-escape
• The lt3luabridge and lua-tinyyaml packages
• TeX Live 2025 or later

Installation

Install import-citation-cff.sty, cfflatex-style-*.def, cfflatex.lua, and cfflatex-data.lua in a local TeX tree such as ~/texmf/tex/latex/import-citation-cff/. The support files use the short prefix cfflatex. Alternatively, you can put them next to your document.

To install both the package and the cfflatexpand command from a source checkout:

l3build install --texmfhome "$HOME/texmf"

The CTAN archive also includes import-citation-cff.tds.zip. As an alternative to installing from source, extract that archive into your local TeX tree:

mkdir -p "$HOME/texmf"
unzip import-citation-cff.tds.zip -d "$HOME/texmf"

Both methods place the package and Lua modules in tex/latex/import-citation-cff/ and the command in scripts/import-citation-cff/. To make the command available in a POSIX shell:

export PATH="$HOME/texmf/scripts/import-citation-cff:$PATH"
cfflatexpand --help

Add the export line to your shell configuration to keep it for future sessions. You can also run the script with texlua and its full path, without changing PATH.

Quick start

Given a CITATION.cff containing:

cff-version: 1.2.0
message: Please cite the paper in preferred-citation.
type: software
title: My Paper Code
authors:
    - family-names: Doe
      given-names: John
preferred-citation:
  type: article
  title: My Paper
  abstract: My paper abstract.
  authors:
    - family-names: Doe
      given-names: Jane
    - family-names: Doe
      given-names: John

Write:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{import-citation-cff}

%\includecff{CITATION.cff}  % reads fields in top level
\includecff[source=preferred-citation]{CITATION.cff}  % reads fields in preferred-citation
\title{\cff{title}}
\author{
  \cffauthor{1}{given-names}~\cffauthor{1}{family-names}
  \and
  \cffauthor{2}{given-names}~\cffauthor{2}{family-names}
}
\date{}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
  \cff{abstract}
\end{abstract}
\end{document}

Compile with either:

pdflatex --shell-escape manuscript.tex
lualatex manuscript.tex

To expand CFF variables:

cfflatexpand manuscript.tex > submission.tex

Documentation

The latest document can be found at:

https://jss95.github.io/cfflatex/import-citation-cff.pdf

Building the document

Run:

l3build doc

The manual is import-citation-cff.pdf.

Development

Lint

Requires:

• badness
• expltools
• lua-check
• Ruff

badness format .
badness lint .
explcheck --warnings-are-errors import-citation-cff.sty cfflatex-style-*.def
luacheck . cfflatexpand
ruff format .
ruff check .
python3 .ci/check_versions.py

Test

Run the LaTeX regression tests and the standalone export CLI tests:

l3build check   # tests with pdfLaTeX and LuaLaTeX
texlua tests/test_cfflatexpand.lua  # export CLI tests
texlua tests/test_cfflatexpand.lua --installed  # temporary TeX-tree installation

Build

l3build builds the manual and the CTAN archive:

l3build doc     # import-citation-cff.pdf
l3build ctan    # import-citation-cff-<version>.zip

The CTAN archive includes the ready-to-install import-citation-cff.tds.zip, which is also written beside it. Test that archive with:

texlua tests/test_cfflatexpand.lua --tds import-citation-cff.tds.zip

License

import-citation-cff is distributed under the MIT License. Report bugs at https://github.com/JSS95/cfflatex/issues.