Janus Sandsgaard wrote: > Ah. Thanks a lot. I was not aware of that. I guess I need to study a little > on the basics of BiB and LaTeX to understand what I am doing. Can you > recommend a (short) resource explaining me someting like: > > - The difference between BiBteX, NatBib, JureBib etc.
Bibtex is a compiler programm that does the job of writing a bibliography environment for you, reading citation entries from a database (*.bib) and some layout information from a style file (*.bst). Bibtex has been designed merely for natural scientist's citation uses (i.e. numerical), but its author, Oren Patashnik, already provided a rudimental extension package for author-year citations (that is apacite.sty) Patrick W. Daly felt that this was not powerful enough and developped another extension package: natbib. It comes with its own style files, but in the meantime, several people have designed alternative style files for natbib. Also, Daly has developped "custom-bib", an interaktive command line tool which lets you create a bst file interactively (by answering some questions). Jens Berger finally came to the conclusion that all the existing packages (including natbib) do not match the requirements of law studies. So he developped the jurabib package, another extension. During the years, it has become very popular and extremely flexible. The difference in concept is that you don't have lots of different static bst files, but only a few bst files which can be very much tweaked via package options and commands. So basically, all those extensions need their own bst files, even if some of them might be inter-chargeable. > - The function of .sty and .bst - and how they can be used. The natbib documentation: http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/english/services/software/latex/localtex/doc/natbib.pdf The jurabib documentation: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/jurabib/docs/english/jbendoc.dvi And this comprehensive documentation about BibTeX: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/bibtex/tamethebeast/ttb_en.pdf > Remember: I am a social scientist :-) The literature I have seen so far is > often quite technical and all I need is to know the rules of the game and a > little background. I am a human scientist. So we share the same problem. > > Try one of natbib's one style files or create one with custom-bib. > > How can I tell if a style works with NatBib? Normally, you can see it in the file: % For use with the `natbib.sty' package; emulates the corresponding % member of the `plain' family, but with author-year citations. or % This is an author-year citation style bibliography. As such, it is % non-standard LaTeX, and requires a special package file to function % properly. % Such a package is natbib.sty by Patrick W. Daly > Can you recommend a place to > look for styles that work with NatBiB? I highly recommend to try custom-bib. Jürgen
