code: def bibitem_as_plaintext(bibitem):
      
      try:
          output = subprocess.check_output(["delatex",
                                            "-s"],
                                           input=bibitem.encode("utf-8"))
      except FileNotFoundError:
          script_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
          output = subprocess.check_output(["%s/../external/opendetex/delatex" %
                                            (script_dir,),
                                            "-s"],
                                           input=bibitem.encode("utf-8"))
      output = output.decode("utf-8")
      output = tools.clean_whitespaces(output)
      return output
docs: Return a plaintext representation of a bibitem from the ``.bbl`` file.
  
      .. note::
  
          This plaintext representation can be super ugly, contain URLs and so \
          on.
  
      .. note::
  
          You need to have ``delatex`` installed system-wide, or to build it in \
                  this repo, according to the ``README.md`` before using this \
                  function.
  
      :param bibitem: The text content of the bibitem.
      :returns: A cleaned plaintext citation from the bibitem.