[OS X TeX] Practical TeX

[Herbert Schulz]

On Oct 22, 2013, at 4:27 AM, roberto avanzi <roberto.avanzi at online.de> wrote:

> On Oct 17, 2013, at 18:31 , George Gratzer <gratzer at me.com> wrote:
> 
>> To keep Practical LaTeX short, I do not discuss books, makeindex, bibtex, and a lot more stuff.
> 
> Just one comment: as others, I agree that leaving bibtex out seems odd. I understand that there are alternatives, such as biblatex, and there is also biber.  But at least a very brief reference should in my opinion there.
> 
> Roberto

Howdy,

Let's get some nomenclature straight. Both bibtex and biber of bibliography processors; i.e., they take information in the files output during an initial typeset and create a bibliography input file (bbl) using the requested bibliography database(s) (bib). This file is then read back in during a subsequent typeset operation to create the bibliography and another typeset operation is necessary to get the correct references to the bibliography in the text. 

The biblatex package, by default, creates the necessary files to be processed by biber but can also create the files for bibtex processing. There are other bibliography packages e.g., natbib, that can only create files to be processed by bibtex.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)