BibTeX

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BibTeX

BibTeX logo
Basic data

developer Oren Patashnik
Current  version 0.99d
(2010)
operating system platform independent
programming language Web
category Literature management program
License GNU Lesser General Public License and BibTeX Copyright
www.ctan.org/pkg/bibtex

BibTeX is a program for creating bibliographies and bibliographies in TeX or LaTeX documents, developed in 1985 by Oren Patashnik and Leslie Lamport in WEB / Pascal. After version 0.99c from February 1988, development stagnated for 22 years. A further development was announced in March 2010 with version 0.99d.

The associated textual file format is now offered as an exchange format by many library catalogs and literature management programs .

functionality

In order to create a bibliography , all citations are extracted from a LaTeX document and assigned to the relevant work via a literature database. The literature database is a text file ( file) in which all known information about a work ( book , scientific publication , website, etc.) is noted in a specific syntax . .bib

The works cited are sorted and listed by a corresponding instruction in the LaTeX document. The formatting of this bibliography is variable. The set in the document BibTeX style (Engl. Style ) determines what information is shown in what format.

BibTeX is able to work with very large collections of literature and very large documents without any problems. BibTeX has therefore established itself for years as an open standard format for references in the academic world .

Latex

When using LaTeX , the first time LaTeX is run, a text file with the extension .aux. When BibTeX is run, a further text file with the extension is generated from the .auxfile and .bibfile (and the .bststyle file) .bbl, which contains exactly the entries from the literature database requested in the document. The next time LaTeX is run, this .bblfile will be used to generate the bibliography. A LaTeX-BibTeX-LaTeX is always necessary.

Pandoc

The Pandoc document parser supports --bibliographythe specification of literature databases in the formats BibTeX, BibLaTeX and others with the switch .

example

The following example (taken from a BibTeX file) 

 @article{lin1973,
    author  = {Shen Lin and Brian W. Kernighan},
    title   = {An Effective Heuristic Algorithm for the Travelling-Salesman Problem},
    journal = {Operations Research},
    volume  = {21},
    year    = {1973},
    pages   = {498--516},
 }

is the BibTeX style plain in this output in the reference list ( engl. bibliography transferred):

[1] Shen Lin and Brian W. Kernighan. An effective heuristic algorithm for the traveling-salesman problem. Operations Research , 21: 498-516, 1973.

The command \cite{lin1973}within a LaTeX document is replaced by the reference given in the BibTeX file with this ID, in the example "[1]". The literature list is generated in the document by the command \bibliography{literature}if the associated BibTeX file with the literature entries literature.bibhas the file name .

In addition to the BibTeX style plain , in which the references are numbered, there is the style alpha , in which the key consists of a combination of the initials of the authors and the year of publication of the work. There are also different variants of these styles, which differ mainly in the presentation of the literature list and are often specific to different scientific publishers , conferences and journals .

BibTeX standardizes the upper and lower case of the title according to Anglo-Saxon norms: Depending on the entry type, either the first word is capitalized and all subsequent words are capitalized or all words are capitalized except for a few English particles. title =This mechanism can be suppressed by doubling the curly braces after , which can be used by default for German-language literature entries. But this changes the sorting of the masked character string. Therefore it is advisable to use a BibTeX style that fully implements German customs, such as Jurabib.

Those who did not quote but want to name a source do so \nocite{lin1973}.

BibTeX entries for Wikipedia articles can be created using the menu item Cite Article from the Tools menu on the left.

Alternatives

There are a number of alternatives to BibTeX, some of which arose between 1988 and 2010, when the further development by Patashnik stagnated:

  • BibTeXu is a new implementation by Yannis Haralambous and his students, which uses the UTF-8 character set.
  • bibtex8 supports 8-bit character sets.
  • CL-BibTeX is a fully compatible replacement for BibTeX. It is programmed with Common Lisp and also supports Unicode.
  • MLBibTeX is a new implementation of BibTeX, which is characterized by the support of several languages; it is written by Jean-Michel Hufflen.
  • biblatex has been programmed from scratch. "It redesigns the way in which LaTeX interacts with BibTeX at a fairly fundamental level. With biblatex, BibTeX is only used to sort the bibliography and to generate labels. Instead of being implemented in BibTeX's style files, the formatting of the bibliography is entirely controlled by TeX macros. "(" It changes the way LaTeX interacts with BibTeX on a very basic level. With biblatex, BibTeX is only used to sort the Bibliography and to create the labels. The formatting of the entries is not implemented as BibTeX formatting files, but is controlled entirely by TeX macros. ")
  • Biber is BibTeX replacement for biblatex users . The advantages over BibTeX include Unicode 6.0 support, language-dependent sorting and UTF-8 citekeys.

Literature types (entry types)

The following table gives a complete overview of the entry types used in BibTeX and the associated fields. Required fields are distinguished from optional fields. All other fields are usually ignored by BibTeX. If you use other than the standard BibTeX styles, these can stipulate names and conventions that differ from the table.

Reference type description Required fields optional fields
article Newspaper or magazine articles author, title, journal, year volume, number, pages, month, note
book book author or editor, title, publisher, year volume or number, series, address, edition, month, note, isbn
booklet Bound printing title author, howpublished, address, month, year, note
conference Scientific conference author, title, booktitle, year editor, volume or number, series, pages, address, month, organization, publisher, note
inbook Part of a book author or editor, title, chapter and / or pages, publisher, year volume or number, series, type, address, edition, month, note
incollection Part of a book (e.g. article in an anthology) with its own title author, title, booktitle, publisher, year editor, volume or number, series, type, chapter, pages, address, edition, month, note
inproceedings Article in a conference report author, title, booktitle, year editor, volume or number, series, pages, address, month, organization, publisher, note
manual Technical Documentation address, title, year author, organization, edition, month, note
mastersthesis Diploma , Magister or other thesis (except doctorate ) author, title, school, year type, address, month, note
misc any entry (if nothing else fits) - author, title, howpublished, month, year, note
phdthesis Doctoral or other doctoral thesis author, title, school, year type, address, month, note
proceedings Conference report title, year editor, volume or number, series, address, month, organization, publisher, note
techreport published report from a university or other institution author, title, institution, year type, note, number, address, month
unpublished not formally published document author, title, note month, year

BibTeX styles

The appearance of the bibliography and citations is determined by BibTeX style files. BibTeX style files have the suffix .bstand contain instructions in a stack-based programming language that specify the formatting of the bibliography entries. The program bibtexformats these entries according to the specifications of such a style file. Usually a file consisting of TeX or LaTeX instructions is output, but there are also style files that generate HTML .

The style files are integrated with the LaTeX command \bibliographystyle{<stilname>}. By default, there are the styles plain, unsrt, alphaand abbrv. There are LaTeX packages that provide extensive extensions for scientific and humanities work, especially the packages natbiband jurabib.

A simple way of being able to process URLs (such as those from the citation aid from Wikipedia) in BibTeX files is to use the style \bibliographystyle{natdin}in conjunction with \usepackage[numbers]{natbib}.

Creating your own BibTeX styles is quite time-consuming. However, they can be makebstgenerated with the package in a question-and-answer dialog in the terminal . The entry for this is: latex makebst.

Bibliography databases

Many library catalogs and literature databases offer the option of exporting bibliographic data directly in BibTeX format in order to include them in your own bibliography. There are different approaches: The file is partially displayed in the browser window in BibTeX format, so that it can be copied and pasted into your own editor or into a literature management program. Sometimes a pure text file is output in BibTeX format.

Publishing websites with BibTeX export:

Literature databases with BibTeX export:

Social bookmarking web services with BibTeX export:

  • BibSonomy - social bookmark and reference management platform , based on the BibTeX format, also imports BibTeX data
  • CiteULike - Community-based BibTeX database

Library catalogs with BibTeX export:

The Lead2Amazon service uses Amazon. (Com, co.uk, de) to generate BibTeX entries.

With the help of the Firefox add-on Zotero , metadata can be saved and exported in BibTeX format when viewing websites (e.g. also library catalogs).

Tools, editors, additions

The KBibTeX tool

A number of tools support the BibTeX format and make it easier to work with BibTeX databases. An example of a simple editor is xfbib, there are also extensive graphic work environments such as KBibTeX under Linux, BibDesk under Mac OS X and the platform-independent JabRef . The Emacs editor contains its own BibTeX mode. BibTeX4Word and the Docear plug-in Docear4Word enable the creation of reference lists in Microsoft Word from BibTeX databases. If the extension Writer2LaTeX is installed, you can export literature databases from OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice in the BibTeX format.

License

In December 2010 it was made clear that the license under which BibTeX was distributed was the same under which TeX was published. BibTeX is therefore both under the "BibTeX Copyright" and under the GNU Lesser General Public License .

See also

  • amsrefs - creation of bibliographies without BibTeX

literature

documentation
  • Oren Patashnik: BibTeXing . February 8, 1988 (Documentation on BibTeX).
Textbooks
Essays and instructions

Web links

Wikibooks: LaTeX Compendium: Citing with BibTeX  - learning and teaching materials
Commons : BibTeX  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • BibTeX Style Examples A list of all possible BibTeX entries and the representation of the result generated

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://ftp.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/ctan/biblio/bibtex/base/bibtex.web Comment in the source text, May 2011.
  2. ↑ Web archive: "MlBibTeX's Architecture" from June 27, 2013
  3. ↑ Description of the biblatex package from Debian's wheezy distribution, as of May 2011.
  4. ↑ Beaver on sourceforge.net
  5. ↑ Oren Patashnik and Karl Berry: CTAN update: bibtex. The CTAN Maintainers, December 13, 2010, accessed December 13, 2010 : “All of the BibTeX-related files originating with the Stanford TeX Project have been updated to clarify the license, which was always intended to be the same as TeX. There are no functional changes. "