[texhax] BibTeX and its limitations

[Herbert Gintis]

         I agree that BibTeX is very good.
         It would be much better if it were possible to write .bst style 
files without learning the dumb little language that BibTeX uses. That is a 
constant pain in the butt. There should be a front end that takes a few 
formatted examples and reverse-engineers the .bst file.
         My BibTeX accepts a maximum of ten bibliography files---this is a 
real drag. I've tried other implementations, but they don't work with 
Windows XP.

Best,

Herb Gintis


At 04:28 PM 11/17/2003 +0100, Jan Eden wrote:
>Hi Richard,
>
>overall, BibTeX is a great tool for keeping track of your references 
>across different publications/papers. The output format is highly 
>configurable using tools like custom-bib.  I never had a problem saving 
>any reference in my .bib database.
>
>If you followed the discussion on another TeX-related list (MacOS-X-Tex), 
>though, you will have read about a problem I had recently. I tried to 
>change the appearance of the bibliography header in the text (have it as a 
>numbered \subsubsection in LaTeX instead of an unnumbered \section).
>
>This is a much more complicated than I expected since the respective 
>function is not easily changed. I finally retreated to using the bibentry 
>package (which takes some of BibTeX's advantages, while adding much 
>flexibility).
>
>Best,
>
>Jan
>
>Richard wrote:
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >I am currently a final year BSc(Hons) Computer Science student at
> >Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.  For my final year dissertation, I
> >am  researching the problems associated with the BibTeX standard for
> >bibliographic data and developing an RDF based data format for
> >bibliographic data, which would overcome these problems.
> >
> >As a user of BibTex:
> >
> >Do you have any experiences of where BibTeX is cumbersome to use
> >and/or inaccurate?
> >
> >Are there any references that BibTeX does not handle very well?
> >
> >Are there any other problems that you have come across?
> >
> >
> >More information on this project is available at
> >http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ceerdl/Dissertation. A current copy of the
> >'work in progress' is also available.  Please do feel free to email me
> >with any suggestions or othere relevant information.  Any
> >contributions will, of course, be acknowledged.
> >
> >Thankyou
> >Richard Lennox
> >
>--
>How many Microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. 
>They just redefine "dark" as the new standard.
>
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Herbert Gintis
Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of 
Massachusetts
External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM
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Recent papers are posted on my <http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis>web site.
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