Ubuntu Manpage: nbibtex - make a bibliography for LaTeX

NAME

       nbibtex - make a bibliography for LaTeX

SYNOPSIS

       nbibtex [options] auxname[.aux] [bibname...]

DESCRIPTION

NbibTeX is a drop-in replacement for BibTeX. It reads the top-level auxiliary (.aux) file that was
output during the running of latex(1) or tex(1) and creates a bibliography (.bbl) file that will be
incorporated into the document on subsequent runs of LaTeX or TeX.

NbibTeX looks up, in bibliographic database (.bib) files specified by the \bibliography command, the
entries specified by the \cite and \nocite commands in the LaTeX or TeX source file. The association of
\cite command with .bib entry is made by a simple query language described below. NbibTeX formats the
information from the .bib entries according to instructions in a bibliography style (.nbs) file
(specified by the \bibliographystyle command, and it outputs the results to the .bbl file.

If the optional bibnames are used, NbibTeX looks in the named bibliographies instead of those specified
by the \bibliography command. A bibname without a slash (/) character means the same thing it would mean
in a \bibliographystyle command: it is looked up according to the rules of BibTeX. A bibname with a
slash character is taken to be the absolute or relative pathname of a .bib file. Explicit bibnames can
be used with the -bib and -o options to make a paper-specific .bib file from larger .bib files.

The LaTeX manual explains what a LaTeX source file must contain to work with NbibTeX. Appendix B of the
manual describes the format of the .bib files. The `NbibTeXing' document describes extensions and details
of this format, and it gives other useful hints for using NbibTeX.

OPTIONS

       -min-crossrefs=number
              The  -min-crossrefs option defines the minimum number of crossref required for automatic inclusion
              of the crossref'd entry on the citation list; the default is 2.

       -terse Accepted for backward compatibility with BibTeX; NbibTeX is terse by default.

       -permissive
              Enables NbibTeX  to  continue  working  even  when  some  of  the  .bib  files  mentioned  in  the
              \bibliography  command  are  missing.   Also  tells NbibTeX not to object if duplicate entries are
              found in multiple .bib files.

       -strict
              Tells NbibTeX to complain about all irregularities it spots  in  any  .bib  file  it  parses.   By
              default,  NbibTeX (like BibTeX) complains only about entries it actually intends to use.

       -o file
              Writes  the  bibliography  to file instead of to the default auxname.bbl.  If file is -, writes to
              standard output.

       -bib   Instead of writing a bibliography for use by LaTeX, writes exactly those NbibTeX entries needed by
              auxname.  Useful for making paper-specific .bib files.

       -help  Emit a short help message and exit.

       -version
              Emit version information and exit.

EXAMPLES

       To make a normal bibliography for file paper.tex:

              nbibtex paper

       To use the personal .bib filebpersonal.bib to make a  paper-specific  bibliography  for  file  paper.tex,
       which should use the command lography{paper}:

              nbibtex -o paper.bib -bib paper personal

       The file personal.bib should be found on the usual BIBINPUTS path.

       To extend the bibliography paper.bib by filling in missing entries from personal.bib:

              nbibtex -permissive -o paper.bib -bib paper paper personal

QUERY LANGUAGE

To specify a paper you wish to cite, classic BibTeX requires an arbitrary key. The advantage of NbibTeX
is that you cite a paper by the contents of the NbibTeX entry.

The citation consists of a sequence of one or more constraints separated by colons. A constraint
may be empty.

A nonempty constraint is of the form key=words, where key is the name of a field in the NbibTeX
entry and words is a sequence of one or more words separated by dashes. The contraint is
satisfied if every word in words is found in the field named by key. (The key may also be [type],
which matches against the type of the entry, or *, which looks for words in any field.)

For example, the following queries might match an entry for a useful source on arithmetic:

author=knuth:series=art-programming:volume=2
author=knuth:title=seminumerical:year=1981

As a convenience, keys may be defaulted in up to three constraints. In the first constraint, the default
key is author (or if there is no author, editor). In the second constraint, the default key is year if
words is all digits, and is title otherwise. In the third constraint, the default key is year if words
is all digits, and is [type] otherwise. So for example, we could have written

knuth:seminumerical:1981

To match a word in words, ΒX uses the Boyer-Moore string-matching algorithm, so longer words are usually
faster.

NbibTeX's query language can be used on the command line by nbibfind(1).

NBIBTEX STYLES AND COMPATIBILITY WITH BibTeX

       Like BibTeX, NbibTeX supports a variety of "styles" of bibliography.  Each style is defined by a  program
       written in Lua, using additional primitives suitable to construction of bibliographies.  NbibTeX provides
       the  three  standard  styles  in  a  form  suitable for use with the natbib package.  Two of these styles
       (abbrvnat and unsrtnat) are completely compatible with the corresponding BibTeX styles; the  third  style
       (plainnat)  has been changed to more closely follow the Chicago Manual of Style.  A compatible version is
       available as style plainnatc.

       Additional styles may be created by writing new Lua code; for example, an  author  wishing  to  create  a
       style  called  mcbride  would  put  a  file  called  mcbride.nbs  (for New BibTeX Style) in the directory
       /usr/share/nbibtex.  For guidance on what goes into  such  a  file,  consult  the  other  files  in  that
       directory and the literate source code for NbibTeX.

ENVIRONMENT

       For  .bib  files,  NbibTeX  searches  the  directories  in  the path defined by the BIBINPUTS environment
       variable if that is  set,  otherwise  the  default.   For  details  of  the  searching,  see  tex(1)  and
       kpsewhich(1).

       No special searching is done for the .aux file.

FILES

       /usr/share/nbibtex/*.nbs
              New bibliography style files.

BUGS

       Although  I  have  made  some effort in this direction, compatibility with BibTeX does not extend to .bib
       files containing non-ASCII characters.

AUTHOR

       Norman Ramsey, Harvard University.

                                                   15 May 2006                                        NBIBTEX(1)