[OS X TeX] Accessing certain fields in a BibTeX-entry directly "in place"

[Simon Spiegel]

On 16.03.2006, at 13:09, Daniel Käsmayr wrote:

> Dear Folks,
>
> I am not sure if what I am trying to accomplish is even possibly as  
> I really haven’t digested all there is to TeX (yet ;)).
>
> Is there some way to get the contents of a Bibtex field with some  
> sort of command? Like "get the field $comment from citation  
> labelXYZ and print it here."
>
> The background for this is: I am writing my thesis in chemistry and  
> would like to have some sort of index of my chemical compounds  
> which all have a short name, a long name, my internal name (i.e.  
> label), have characteristics such as molecular weights, have  
> associated sections in the text where they are mentioned - etc; and  
> I would love to have a list of all these compounds in my appendix -  
> including graphics etc.
>
> I was thinking along the lines of creating a custom bibtex file for  
> this and then working my way up from it. But still - I would need  
> those "database" like features... is bibtex designed for this at all?
>
> Am I making sense? Has anyone heard of such a thing being done in  
> LaTeX before?

AFAIK there isn't a direct way to do this, since the interaction  
between LaTeX and BibTeX always works with specific styles. But you  
can do this with jurabib (I don't know about other styles). Jurabib  
has the \citefield command. It doesn't allow you to cite every field  
you want, but only specific title fields, but that doesn't matter.  
You could, for example, create an entry where you put the name of  
your chemical compound into the title and then do a \citefield{title} 
{yourcitekey}. This is an ugly solution, but I think it should work  
(I think you could even create a new enty type in BibDesk, let's say  
compound which just consits of a title and the cite those).

HTH

simon
--
Simon Spiegel
Mutschellenstr. 97
8038 Zürich

Telephon: ++41 43 535 81 71
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http://www.simifilm.ch

"I have never been certain that the moral of the Icarus myth is, as  
is generally accepted, 'don't fly too high', or whether it might also  
be thought of as: 'forget about the wax and feathers, and do a better  
job on the wings." Stanley Kubrick

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