[SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

finferflu · 2008-02-07 12:50:50

I'm in the process of writing my dissertation, which will be quite long, and I expect it to include a big amount of references, so, since I am using LaTeX I thought it was appropriate to automate the task (writing a bibliography manually takes a LOT of time).

Now here is my problem: I belong to the faculty of Humanities, which doesn't use the Harvard system, nor the scientific paper system, and it seems to me that these are the only available options.

What I need is this:

For a book:

Surname, Forename, Book Title. Publisher: Location, year.

For an article, or a book from a collection:

Surname, Forename, 'Title' in Surname, Forename ed., Collection Title. Publisher: Location, year.

For an online resource:

Surname, Forename (if available), Website Name, http://address

But that's not all, because if I want to quote them in a footnote, I have to use a different system:

For a book:

Surname, F., Book Title (Publisher: Location, year), page numbers.

and so on (I think the pattern is clear).

Also, if I use the same reference more than once, I have to abbreviate it, so if it were a book it would became:

Surname, Shortened Book Title, page numbers.

Do you think any of this is achievable? As you can see writing all this manually every time is quite stressful, distracting and slows me down a lot.

Thanks for your time

Last edited by finferflu (2008-02-22 15:38:00)

Ramses de Norre · 2008-02-07 13:10:29

I suppose you are using BiBTeX? If so, your desired layout is probably (mostly) in this list. If not, consider using BiBTeX

EDIT: I'm afraid the footnotes thing isn't supported though... I don't know how easy it is to write your own BiBTeX style, but most TeX stuff are quite complicated.

Last edited by Ramses de Norre (2008-02-07 13:14:22)

arooaroo · 2008-02-07 13:34:05

Yep, makebst will probably be your friend then - it's really quite straight-forward. Otherwise, get to your library loan out The LaTeX Companion.

finferflu · 2008-02-07 14:02:54

Thanks for the tips
arooaroo, I have found some information about makebst on your website, I had looked at it before, but I didn't notice the makebst section. Thanks

I will ask for further clarification if I need to, otherwise I'll post my settings, just to "solve" the thread.

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-07 20:54:05

The humanists I know are very satisfied with the quite new biblatex package. I didn't dig deeper into this but if you fail with makebst for some reason, you can try it.

The idea behind biblatex is to write your own style and to use latex rather than the not so easy language builtin in bibtex.

finferflu · 2008-02-07 21:06:02

I have tried to look around for alternatives, but I can't find anything that is different from scientific papers or Harvard. I really wonder if they have found out something else. I have created my own style with makebst, but I still have to try it, and I'm not so sure about so many of the questions I have answered that I don't know what kind of results I will get

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-13 18:35:55

finferflu wrote:

I have tried to look around for alternatives, but I can't find anything that is different from scientific papers or Harvard. I really wonder if they have found out something else. I have created my own style with makebst, but I still have to try it, and I'm not so sure about so many of the questions I have answered that I don't know what kind of results I will get

Have a look at biblatex-dw. I put a pkgbuild to the AUR.

finferflu · 2008-02-13 18:58:31

Stefan Husmann wrote:

finferflu wrote:
I have tried to look around for alternatives, but I can't find anything that is different from scientific papers or Harvard. I really wonder if they have found out something else. I have created my own style with makebst, but I still have to try it, and I'm not so sure about so many of the questions I have answered that I don't know what kind of results I will get
Have a look at biblatex-dw. I put a pkgbuild to the AUR.

Oh yeah!
That's exactly what I needed!!! Thanks a lot! You saved me from a lot of troubles

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-13 21:52:55

Good luck for your dissertation!

finferflu · 2008-02-22 10:32:14

Thanks Stefan

Now I have a tiny problem, which is just a little annoyance I want to get rid of. I'm happy with the way the bibliography is shown, except I want titles to appear in italics. I have read the manual for biblatex-dw, and there's no such option. Is there any way I can change that without resorting to makebst? Something along the lines of \renewcommand or something of that sort?

Thanks

awagner · 2008-02-22 11:39:28

AFAIU you'd have to adjust your *.cbx (citation style used at the place where the work is mentioned) and/or *.bbx (bibliography style used in the appendix-bibliography) accordingly. They can be found in sometexmf-path/tex/latex/biblatex. Which styles are you using?
You could make a copy (e.g. authoryear-cverb-finferflu.cbx) and then modify/use that. In those files you can use biblatex special and plain latex commands, e.g. you could change

\printfield{title}

to

\textit{\printfield{title}}

(Maybe your commands look different already, tho. This is just meant as an example. But the style files are actually not that hard to understand IMHO.)

HTH,
Andreas

finferflu · 2008-02-22 12:05:53

Thanks for your reply.

All I'm using is the biblatex-dw package.
It is based on biblatex, obviously, but it has its own set of options, as far as I understand.
So here is all I enter:

\usepackage[
style=footnote-dw,
nopublisher=false,
herename=true]{biblatex}

I'll try to look around to see if I understand what needs changing in my case...

Edit
Well, actually it is a style.
I know I sound quite stupid, but I'm quite new to LaTeX

Last edited by finferflu (2008-02-22 12:11:06)

awagner · 2008-02-22 12:32:54

hey, you've made me notice that the package is out finally! I've been waiting for it for some time now. Off to checking for any other important updates (like biblatex itself) I might have missed...

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-22 13:41:03

Please read the manual on page 94 ff and try to put \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\emph{#1}}. Not tested.

finferflu · 2008-02-22 13:44:09

Thanks
Sorry for the stupid question, but which manual are you referring to? I was referring to the manual I have found on the biblatex-dw website, and that surely hasn't got 94 pages.

Edit
It worked by the way!!

Last edited by finferflu (2008-02-22 13:46:34)

awagner · 2008-02-22 15:18:55

finferflu wrote:

Sorry for the stupid question, but which manual are you referring to? I was referring to the manual I have found on the biblatex-dw website, and that surely hasn't got 94 pages.

That should be biblatex's biblatex.pdf. (On the version I still have installed, the same passages are on earlier pages, so just do a search for declarefieldformat - the information is a bit spread over many pages.) I have just looked it up and the approach mentioned there is of course preferable. Sorry for pointing in the wrong direction.

Last edited by awagner (2008-02-22 15:30:18)

finferflu · 2008-02-22 15:35:56

Thanks awagner
Don't worry, I would have even used your solution if that would have worked. I haven't tested it, so we can't say it was altogether wrong

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-22 19:18:36

Sorry for not being clear enough, awagner is right with pointing to the manual of biblatex. BTW, does a "texdoc biblatex" lead you to that pdf-file?

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-22 19:27:35

awagner wrote:

finferflu wrote:
Sorry for the stupid question, but which manual are you referring to? I was referring to the manual I have found on the biblatex-dw website, and that surely hasn't got 94 pages.
That should be biblatex's biblatex.pdf. (On the version I still have installed, the same passages are on earlier pages, so just do a search for declarefieldformat - the information is a bit spread over many pages.) I have just looked it up and the approach mentioned there is of course preferable. Sorry for pointing in the wrong direction.

Sorry for not being clear enough, awagner is right with pointing to the manual of biblatex. BTW, does a "texdoc biblatex" lead you to that pdf-file?
If you have the version from the AUR it should.

The biblatex version should be 0.7d. This is in the AUR. Guess who maintains it

If you get an md5sum error, the version may have changed. There is no version number in the name of the zipfile.

finferflu · 2008-02-23 15:05:34

Stefan Husmann wrote:

awagner wrote:
finferflu wrote:
Sorry for the stupid question, but which manual are you referring to? I was referring to the manual I have found on the biblatex-dw website, and that surely hasn't got 94 pages.
That should be biblatex's biblatex.pdf. (On the version I still have installed, the same passages are on earlier pages, so just do a search for declarefieldformat - the information is a bit spread over many pages.) I have just looked it up and the approach mentioned there is of course preferable. Sorry for pointing in the wrong direction.
Sorry for not being clear enough, awagner is right with pointing to the manual of biblatex. BTW, does a "texdoc biblatex" lead you to that pdf-file?
If you have the version from the AUR it should.
The biblatex version should be 0.7d. This is in the AUR. Guess who maintains it
If you get an md5sum error, the version may have changed. There is no version number in the name of the zipfile.

No problem

I didn't even know of the texdoc command, thanks.
However, yes, I have biblatex from the AUR but when I run that command I get:

/opt/texlive/bin/texdoc: line 195: acroread: command not found

which is obvious, since I don't use acroread. How to change that? Is there any config file?

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-23 15:18:07

You need some other pdf-viewer. That can be run by changing the environment TEXDOCVIEW_pdf.

For xpdf it would be
export TEXDOCVIEW_pdf="xpdf %s"
Write this into your .bashrc or even into /etc/profile to make it to your default.

Alternatives are gv, gsview, evince, epdfview...

finferflu · 2008-02-23 16:30:52

Thanks a lot Stefan
I'm quite satisfied with evince right now, not that it's excellent, but it's the least awful

Stefan Husmann · 2008-02-23 16:48:51

I think evince is a good choice. It can handle the old .dvi format also, so you probably want to let the variable $TEXDOCVIEW_dvi point to evince also.

finferflu · 2008-02-23 16:58:33

Ok, done. Thanks for the tip

finferflu · 2008-04-14 09:36:40

I've tried to read the Biblatex manual, but it confused me more than anything else.
Anyway, so far I've been able to edit the entries of any category (thanks to Google), this way:

\DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\emph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[inbook]{booktitle}{\emph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[inbook]{title}{``{#1}''}
\DeclareFieldFormat[inproceedings]{title}{``{#1}''}
\DeclareFieldFormat[inproceedings]{booktitle}{\emph{#1}}

However I haven't been able to edit the shorttitle entries. I have tried with this:

\DeclareFieldFormat[book]{shorttitle}{\emph{#1}}

but it doesn't work.

Do you have any ideas on how to have a shorttitle in italic?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-07 12:50:50

[SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#2 2008-02-07 13:10:29

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#3 2008-02-07 13:34:05

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#4 2008-02-07 14:02:54

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#5 2008-02-07 20:54:05

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#6 2008-02-07 21:06:02

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#7 2008-02-13 18:35:55

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#8 2008-02-13 18:58:31

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#9 2008-02-13 21:52:55

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#10 2008-02-22 10:32:14

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#11 2008-02-22 11:39:28

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#12 2008-02-22 12:05:53

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#13 2008-02-22 12:32:54

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#14 2008-02-22 13:41:03

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#15 2008-02-22 13:44:09

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#16 2008-02-22 15:18:55

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#17 2008-02-22 15:35:56

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#18 2008-02-22 19:18:36

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#19 2008-02-22 19:27:35

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#20 2008-02-23 15:05:34

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#21 2008-02-23 15:18:07

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#22 2008-02-23 16:30:52

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#23 2008-02-23 16:48:51

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#24 2008-02-23 16:58:33

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

#25 2008-04-14 09:36:40

Re: [SOLVED] Help creating a LaTeX bibliography the way I need it

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