[OS X TeX] Basic question on BibTex

[Johan Almqvist]

On Mar 10, 2006, at 20:17, Winfried Zettelmeyer wrote:

> Hallo, all,
> after unsuccessfully searching on the bibdesk-users list sorry for  
> asking this Level-0-question here:
> I am starting with Bibdesk (version 1.2.5), opened a new  
> bibliography and entered a publication, complete with citation key.  
> I have saved the file in the folder with the .tex and aux-files.
> When dragging the entry into my .tex file it is appears nicely with  
> \cite{}, however, it does not compile, showing only ? in the pdf  
> output. The log file says "LaTeX Warning: Citation  
> `Milton2000Approaches-to-p' on page 3 undefined on input line 82".  
> So it apparently does not find the .bib file. Where to put  
> this .bib file so that the entry is recognised ?
> Thanks for your help !

It sound to me like you haven't run bibtex on the file. To understand  
how bibtex works, read
	http://www.iam.ubc.ca/~newbury/tex/bibtex.html
Especially the following part:
"Right, so you make this database file and call it, say,  
references.bib. How do you get LaTeX to use it? In the LaTeX source  
for your document, put these two lines:
\bibliography{references,more_references}
\bibliographystyle{style}
where references,more_references are a list of .bib databases you  
might use in this document, and style is the .bst citation style  
you've chosen for this document. Cite as usual in the text of the  
document:
"...should refer to \cite{DY20.1} and references therein..."
Now you compile the document called, say, root.tex. It takes four (4)  
commands:
1. latex root
This makes a bunch of .aux files, one for the root and one for each  
\include'd file, listing what references will be needed.
2. bibtex root
This reads the .aux files and makes a new file called root.bbl with  
the LaTeX source for the bibliography. You can edit this file if you  
don't like the placement of italics or capital letters or something.
3. latex root
Run latex again to, uh, do something. You'll probably get the  
"...references may have changed" message.
4. latex root
The usual gotta-run-LaTeX-twice command. Now everything should be  
done. Any citation labels that don't match between the .tex file and  
the .bib file will be spewed onto the terminal.
Be careful not to say latex root.tex and then bibtex root where  
sometimes you add the .tex extension and sometimes not. As our friend  
Jim would say, BibTeX blows chunks."

If you use TeXShop or somthing similar, you may of course use the  
shortcut in that program to run bibtex. But remember that you always  
have to run LaTeX -> BibTeX -> LaTeX -> LaTeX.

-Johan
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