%% ttb_en.sec3.tex %% Copyright 2003-2005 Nicolas Markey % % This work may be distributed and/or modified under the % conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3 % of this license or (at your option) any later version. % The latest version of this license is in % http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt % and version 1.3 or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX % version 2003/12/01 or later. % % This work has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained". % The Current Maintainer of this work is Nicolas Markey % % This work consists of the files % ttb_en.tex % ttb_en.sec1.tex ttb_en.sec2.tex ttb_en.sec3.tex % ttb_en.sec4.tex ttb_en.sec5.tex ttb_style.sty % local.bib idxstyle.ist Makefile % and the derived ttb_en.dvi, ttb_en.ps and ttb_en.pdf \mypart{The \protect\niext{bib} file}\label{part3} \parttoc \mtcskip The \ext{bib} file is the database. Its contents heavily depends on the style being applied to it, even though bibliography styles are generally ``compatible'' with each w.r.t.\ the database. I will only describe here the case of standard styles\footnote{Thus using entry types and fields as described at pages~\pageref{champ} to~\pageref{fin-champ}.}. But remember that \bt can do many other things, we'll see some examples in section~\ref{autres}. \mysection{Structure of the \protect\niext{bib} file} We start with an example: \begin{verbatimtab} @book{companion, author = "Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Franck and Samarin, Alexander", title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", publisher = "Addison-Wesley", year = 1993, } \end{verbatimtab} We just consider the structure of this entry for the moment, not its contents. The general form is the following\footnote{The outermost braces can be replaced by parentheses: \texttt{\at{\itshape entry\_type}({\itshape internal\_key}, ...)}.}: \bigskip \noindent\begin{minipage}{\textwidth} \obeylines \ttfamily \at{\itshape entry\_type}\{internal\_key, \ \ {\bfseries field\_1}\ \ \ \ \ \ \ = "value\_1", \ \ {\bfseries field\_2}\ \ \ \ \ \ \ = "value\_2", \ \ ... \ \ {\bfseries field\_n}\ \ \ \ \ \ \ = "value\_n" \} \end{minipage} \bigskip \noindent Some basic remarks: \begin{itemize} \item New entries always start with \texttt\at. Anything outside the ``argument'' of a ``command'' starting with an \texttt\at{} is considered as a comment. This gives an easy way to comment a given entry: just remove the initial \texttt\at. As usual when a language allows comments, don't hesitate to use them so that you have a clean, ordered, and easy-to-maintain database. Conversely, anything starting with an \texttt\at{} is considered as being a new entry\footnote{There is a special entry type named \ent{comment}. The main use of such an entry type is to comment a large part of the bibliography easily, since anything outside an entry is already a comment, and commenting out one entry may be achieved by just removing its initial~\texttt{\at}.}. \item \bt does not distinguish between normal and capital letters in entry and field names. \bt will complain if two entries have the same internal key, even if they aren't capitalized in the same way. For instance, you cannot have two entries named \texttt{Example} and \texttt{example}. In the same way, if you cite both \texttt{example} and \texttt{Example}, \bt will complain. Indeed, it~would have to include the same entry twice, which probably is not what you want; \item Spaces and line breaks are not important, except for readability. On the contrary, commas are compulsory between any two fields; \item Values (\emph{i.e.} right hand sides of each assignment) can be either between curly braces or between double quotes. The main difference is that you can write double quotes in the first case, and not in the second case. For citing \emph{Comments on ``Filenames and Fonts''} by Franck \textsc{Mittelbach}, you can use one of the following solutions: \begin{verbatimtab} title = "Comments on {"}Filenames and Fonts{"}", title = {Comments on "Filenames and Fonts"}, \end{verbatimtab} Curly braces have to match, since they will appear in the output to be compiled by \LaTeX. A problem occurs if you need to write a (left-, say) brace in an entry. You could of course write \verb+\{+, but the entry will have to also include the corresponding right brace. To include a left brace without its corresponding right brace, you'll have use a \LaTeX~function having no brace in its name. \cmd{leftbrace} is the right choice here. Another solution is to add an extra \cmd{bgroup} in the entry, so that both \LaTeX and \bt will find the correct number of ``braces''. \item For numerical values, curly braces and double quotes can be omitted. \end{itemize} As I already mentioned, you can define fields even if they aren't used by the style being applied. For instance, the following can be used for the \LaTeX Companion: \begin{verbatimtab} @book{companion, author = "Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Franck and Samarin, Alexander", title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", booktitle = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", publisher = "Addison-Wesley", year = 1993, month = "December", ISBN = "0-201-54199-8", library = "Yes", } \end{verbatimtab} It gives complementary information about the book\footnote{Filling both \nichp{title} and \nichp{booktitle} for a book may be of real interest, as we will see in the section dedicated to cross references (see section~\ref{crossref} for some more details).}, for instance the fact that it is available in your local library. You really should not hesitate to use auxiliary, personal fields, giving them explicit names in order to be sure that no bibliography style will use them incidentally\footnote{You'll ask ``Is it really useful?''. First of all, it doesn't take long to add those informations each time you add a new entry; it~takes much longer to add a field to several entries. Moreover, we'll see later how to design bibliography styles, and you'll be able to write styles that take those new fields into account.}. \mysection{The \protect\nient{string} and \protect\nient{preamble} entries}\label{strpre} These are not really entry types: \ent{string} entries can be used in order to define abbreviations. For instance, we've cited two books published by Addison-Wesley. It might be useful to define a shortcut for this publisher. Thus we write: \begin{verbatimtab} @string{AW = "Addison-Wesley"} @book{companion, author = "Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Franck and Samarin, Alexander", title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", booktitle = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", publisher = AW, year = 1993, month = "December", ISBN = "0-201-54199-8", library = "Yes", } \end{verbatimtab} This does not only spare some time, but most importantly, it ensures that you won't misspell it, and helps you maintain a homogeneous database. I find this really interesting for author names, so that you're sure to always write them correctly (or always incorrectly, but it would be easy to detect and correct a global mistake anyway). As regards \ent{preamble}, it may be used for inserting commands or text in the file created by \bt. Anything declared in a \ent{preamble} command will be concatenated and put in a variable named \fn{preamble}, for being used in the bibliography style and, generally, inserted at the beginning of the \ext{bbl} file, just before the \env{thebibliography} environment. This is useful for defining new commands used in the bibliography. Here is a small example: \begin{verbatimtab} @preamble{ "\makeatletter" } @preamble{ "\@ifundefined{url}{\def\url#1{\texttt{#1}}}{}" } @preamble{ "\makeatother" } \end{verbatimtab} This way, you may safely use the \nicmd{url} command in your entries. If it is not defined at the beginning of the bibliography, the default command defined in the \ent{preamble} will be used. Please note that you should never define style settings in the \ent{preamble} of a bibliography database, since it would be applied to any bibliography built from this database. \mysection{The \nichp{title} field}\label{title} Let's see how to fill the ``title'' field. We start by studying how I entered the title field for the \emph{\LaTeX Companion} : \begin{verbatimtab} title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion" \end{verbatimtab} We'll need several definitions before going further. The \emph{brace depth} of an item is the number of braces surrounding it. This is not a very formal definition, but for instance, in the title above, \verb+\LaTeX+ has brace depth $2$, the \verb+C+ has brace depth $1$, and everything else has depth $0$\footnote{Of course, surrounding the field with braces instead of quotes does not modify the brace depth.}. A~\emph{special character} is a part of a field starting with a left brace being at brace depth $0$ immediately followed with a backslash, and ending with the corresponding right brace. For instance, in the above example, there is no special character, since \verb+\LaTeX+ is at depth~$2$. It should be noticed that anything in a special character is considered as being at brace depth~$0$, even if it is placed between another pair of braces. That's it for the definitions. Generally speaking, several modifications can be applied to the title by the bibliography style: \begin{itemize} \item first of all, the title might be used for sorting. When sorting, \bt computes a string, named \fn{sort.key}, for each entry. The \fn{sort.key} string is an (often long) string defining the order in which entries will be sorted. To avoid any ambiguity, \fn{sort.key} should only contain alphanumeric characters. Classical non-alphanumeric characters\footnote{Except hyphens and tildes that are replaced by spaces. Spaces are preserved. The precise behavior of \fn{purify} is explain on page~\pageref{purify}.}, except special characters, will be removed by a \bt function named \fn{purify}. For special characters, \fn{purify} removes spaces and \LaTeX commands (strings beginning with a backslash), even those placed between brace pairs. Everything else is left unmodified. For instance, \verb+t\^ete+, \verb+t{\^e}te+ and \verb+t{\^{e}}te+ are transformed into \verb+tete+, while \texttt{t\^ete} gives \texttt{t\^ete}; \verb+Bib{\TeX}+ gives \verb+Bib+ and \verb+Bib\TeX+ becomes \verb+BibTeX+. There are thirteen \LaTeX commands that won't follow the above rules: \verb+\OE+, \verb+\ae+, \verb+\AE+, \verb+\aa+, \verb+\AA+, \verb+\o+, \verb+\O+, \verb+\l+, \verb+\L+, \verb+\ss+. Those commands correspond to \i, \j, \oe, \OE, \ae, \AE, \aa, \AA, \o, \O, \l, \L, \ss, and \fn{purify} transforms them (if they are in a special character, in \verb+i+, \verb+j+, \verb+oe+, \verb+OE+, \verb+ae+, \verb+AE+, \verb+aa+, \verb+AA+, \verb+o+, \verb+O+, \verb+l+, \verb+L+, \verb+ss+, respectively. \item the second transformation applied to a title is to be turned to lower case (except the first character). The function named \fn{change.case} does this job. But it only applies to letters that are a brace depth~$0$, except within a special character. In a special character, brace depth is always $0$, and letters are switched to lower case, except \LaTeX commands, that are left unmodified. \end{itemize} Both transformations might be applied to the \chp{title} field by standard styles, and you must ensure that your title will be treated correctly in all cases. Let's try to apply it now, for instance to \emph{the \LaTeX Companion}. Several solutions might be tried: \begin{itemize} \item \verb+ title = "The \LaTeX Companion"+: This won't work, since turning it to lower case will produce \verb+The \latex companion+, and \LaTeX won't accept this... \item \verb+ title = "The {\LaTeX} {C}ompanion"+ : This ensures that switching to lower case will be correct. However, applying \fn{purify} gives \verb+The Companion+. Thus sorting could be wrong; \item \verb+ title = "The {\csname LaTeX\endcsname} {C}ompanion"+: This won't work since \texttt{LaTeX} will be turned to \texttt{latex}; \item \verb+ title = "The { \LaTeX} {C}ompanion"+ : In this case, \verb+{ \LaTeX}+ is \emph{not} a special character, but a set of letters at depth~$1$. It won't be modified by \fn{change.case}. However, \fn{purify} will leave both spaces, and produce \verb+The LaTeX Companion+, which could result in wrong sorting; \item \verb+ title = "The{ \LaTeX} {C}ompanion"+: This solution also works, but is not as elegant as the next one; \item \verb+ title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion"+ : This is the solution I used. It solves the problems mentioned above. \end{itemize} For encoding an accent in a title, say \emph{\'E} (in upper case) as in the French word \emph{\'Ecole}, we'll write \verb+{\'{E}}cole+, \verb+{\'E}cole+ or \verb+{{\'E}}cole+, depending on whether we want it to be turned to lower case (the first two solutions) or not (the last one). \fn{purify} will give the same result in the three cases. However, it should be noticed that the third one is not a special character. If you ask \bt to extract the first character of each string using \fn{text.prefix}, you'll get \verb+{\'{E}}+ in the first case, \verb+{\'E}+ in the second case and \verb+{{\}}+ in the third case. That's all for subtleties of titles. Let's have a look at author names, which is even more tricky. \mysection{The \nichp{author} field}\label{author} We still begin with the entry for the \emph{\LaTeX Companion}: \begin{verbatim} author = "Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Franck and Samarin, Alexander" \end{verbatim} The first point to notice is that two authors are separated with the keyword \texttt{and}\index{bibtex}{and}. The format of the names is the second important point: The last name first, then the first name, with a separating comma. In fact, \bt understands other formats. Before going further, we remark an important point: \bt will have to \emph{guess} which part is the first name and which part is the last name. It also has to distinguish a possible ``von'' part (as in John von Neumann) and a possible ``Jr'' part. The following explanation is somewhat technical. The first name will be called \verb+First+, the last name is denoted by \verb+Last+, the ``von'' with \verb+von+ and the ``Jr'' part, \verb+Jr+. So, \bt must be able to distinguish between the different parts of the \chp{author} field. To that aim, \bt recognizes three possible formats: \begin{itemize} \item \verb+First von Last+; \item \verb+von Last, First+; \item \verb+von Last, Jr, First+. \end{itemize} The format to be considered is obtained by counting the number of commas in the name. Here are the characteristics of these formats: \begin{itemize} \item \verb+First von Last+: Suppose you entered \verb+Jean de La Fontaine+. There is no comma, hence the format is \verb+First von Last+. The \verb+Last+ name cannot be empty, unless the whole field is. It should then contain at least \verb+Fontaine+. \bt then looks at the first character\footnote{In the sequel, the first character means ``the first non-brace character that at brace depth $0$, if any, characters of a special character being at depth $0$, even if there are $15$ braces around.'' If there is no character at depth $0$, then the item will go with its neighbour, first and foremost with the \texttt{First}, then with the \texttt{Last}. It will be in the \texttt{von} if, and only if, it is surrounded with two \texttt{von} items. Moreover, two words in the same group (in \LaTeX sense) will go to the same place. Last, for a \LaTeX command outside a special character, the backslash is removed and \bt considers the remaining word. If you did not understand, please take a while for reading this note anew, since it will be used in the sequel.} of each remaining word. If some of them are lower cases alphabetic letters, anything between the first and the last ones (beginning with lower cases) is considered as being in the \verb+von+. Anything before the \verb+von+ is in the \verb+First+, anything after is in the \verb+Last+. If no first letter is in lower case, then everything (except the part already put in the \verb+Last+) is put in the \verb+First+. \verb+Jean de La Fontaine+ will then give \verb+La Fontaine+ as the \verb+Last+, \verb+Jean+ for the \verb+First+ and \verb+de+ for the \verb+von+. Here is what it gives for several other combinations. This is for you to check if you understood: \begin{center} \begin{longtable}{|>{\vrule height 4mm depth 2mm width 0pt}p{.3\textwidth}|p{.15\textwidth}|p{.15\textwidth}|p{.18\textwidth}|} \hline Name & \verb+First+ & \verb+von+ & \verb+Last+ \endfirsthead \hline Name & \verb+First+ & \verb+von+ & \verb+Last+ \endhead \hline \verb+jean de la fontaine+ & \verb++ & \verb+jean de la+ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+Jean de la fontaine+ & \verb+Jean+ & \verb+de la+ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+Jean {de} la fontaine+ & \verb+Jean de+ & \verb+la+ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+jean {de} {la} fontaine+ & \verb++ & \verb+jean+ & \verb+de la fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+Jean {de} {la} fontaine+ & \verb+Jean de la+ & \verb++ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+Jean De La Fontaine+ & \verb+Jean De La+ & \verb++ & \verb+Fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+jean De la Fontaine+ & \verb++ & \verb+jean De la+ & \verb+Fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+Jean de La Fontaine+ & \verb+Jean+ & \verb+de+ & \verb+La Fontaine+ \\ \hline \end{longtable} \end{center} The last line is the only one (in this table) that is correct. Of course, some of you will have a counter example where the \verb+von+ has to begin with an upper case letter. We'll see this at section~\ref{trucsbib}. \item \verb+von Last, First+: The idea is similar, but identifying the \verb+First+ is easier: It's everything after the comma. Before the comma, the last word is put in the \verb+Last+ (even if it starts with a lower case). If any other word begins with a lower case, anything from the first word to the last one starting with a lower case is in the \verb+von+, and what remains is in the \verb+Last+. Once again, an example should make everything clear: \begin{center} \begin{longtable}{|>{\vrule height 4mm depth 2mm width 0pt}p{.3\textwidth}|p{.15\textwidth}|p{.15\textwidth}|p{.18\textwidth}|} \hline Name & \verb+First+ & \verb+von+ & \verb+Last+ \endfirsthead \hline Name & \verb+First+ & \verb+von+ & \verb+Last+ \endhead \hline \verb+jean de la fontaine,+\footnotemark & \verb++ & \verb+jean de la+ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \noalign{\footnotetext{This case raises an error message from \bt, complaining that a name ends with a comma. It is a common error to separate names with commas instead of ``\texttt{and}''.}}% \hline \verb+de la fontaine, Jean + & \verb+Jean+ & \verb+de la+ & \verb+fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+De La Fontaine, Jean+ & \verb+Jean+ & \verb++ & \verb+De La Fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+De la Fontaine, Jean+ & \verb+Jean+ & \verb+De la+ & \verb+Fontaine+ \\ \hline \verb+de La Fontaine, Jean+ & \verb+Jean+ & \verb+de+ & \verb+La Fontaine+ \\ \hline \end{longtable} \end{center} %\medskip \item \verb+von Last, Jr, First+: Well... It's still the same, except that anything between the commas is put in the \verb+Jr+. \end{itemize} Names are separated by spaces above, but it may occur that two first names are separated by a hyphen, as in ``Jean-Fran\c cois'' for instance. \bt splits that string, and if both parts are in the \verb+First+, the abbreviated surnames is ``J.-F.'' as (generally) wanted. A tilde is also seen as a string separator. This all boils down to the fact that, if you enter \verb+Jean-baptiste Poquelin+, the string \verb+baptiste+ will be in the \verb+von+ part of the name, since it erroneously begins with a lower case letter. \medskip I think it's a good place for coming back to abbreviations: You probably agree that names are something not that easy to enter, and are error-prone. I personally advise defining an abbreviation for each author. You'll then concatenate them with \verb+``and''+ using \verb+#+\index{bibtex}{\#@\texttt{\#}(concatenation)}\index{bibtex}{concatenation@concatenation (\texttt{\#})} (actually, even \verb+``and''+ will be defined as an abbreviation). For instance, I always include a \ext{bib} file containing the following lines: \begin{verbatimtab} @string{and = "and"} ... @string{goossens = "Goossens, Michel"} @string{mittelbach = "Mittelbach, Franck"} @string{samarin = "Samarin, Alexander"} \end{verbatimtab} another one containing: \begin{verbatimtab} @string{AW = "Addison-Wesley"} \end{verbatimtab} and my main bibliographic file contains\footnote{This is not quite true, since \texttt{December} still depends on the language, and I prefer using \texttt{12} and letting the style file translate that into the corresponding month in the correct language.}: \begin{verbatimtab} @book{companion, author = goossens # and # mittelbach # and # samarin, title = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", booktitle = "The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion", year = 1993, publisher = AW, month = "December", ISBN = "0-201-54199-8", library = "Yes", } \end{verbatimtab} This makes adding an entry much easier when you're used to such an encoding. Moreover, you can easily recover self-contained entries by using \texttt{bibexport.sh}~tool (see section~\ref{bibexport}). \mysection{Cross-references (\protect\nichp{crossref})}\label{crossref} As mentioned earlier (can't remember where... Oh, yes, on page~\pageref{cetaitla}), \bt allows for cross-referencing. This is very useful, for instance, when citing a part of a book, or an article in conference proceedings. For instance, for citing chapter~$13$ of the \LaTeX~Companion: \begin{verbatimtab} @incollection{companion-bib, crossref = "companion", title = "Bibliography Generation", chapter = 13, pages = "371-420", } \end{verbatimtab} This shows why having defined the \chp{booktitle} field of the \verb+companion+~entry is useful: It is not used in the \ent{book} entry, but it is inherited in the above \ent{incollection} entry. We could of course have added it by hand, but we should have added it in each chapter we cite. The other possible interesting feature is that, when cross-referencing several times an entry that is not cited by itself, \bt can ``factor'' it, \emph{i.e.} add it in the list of references and explicitly \cmd{cite} it in each entry. On the other hand, if the cross reference appears only once, it inherits from the fields of the reference, which is not included in the bibliography. Here is an example of both behaviours: \medskip \begin{myex} \begin{thebibliography}{1} \bibitem{bib} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Bibliography generation. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion\/} \cite{companion4}, chapter~13, pages 371--420. \bibitem{math} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Higher mathematics. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion\/} \cite{companion4}, chapter~8, pages 215--258. \bibitem{ind} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Index generation. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion\/} \cite{companion4}, chapter~12, pages 345--370. \bibitem{companion4} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion}. \newblock Addison-Wesley, December 1993. \end{thebibliography} \end{myex} \medskip \noindent or\medskip \begin{myex} \begin{thebibliography}{1} \bibitem{bib2} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Bibliography generation. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion}, chapter~13, pages 371--420. Addison-Wesley, December 1993. \bibitem{math2} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Higher mathematics. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion}, chapter~8, pages 215--258. Addison-Wesley, December 1993. \bibitem{ind2} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin. \newblock Index generation. \newblock In {\em The {{\LaTeX}} {C}ompanion}, chapter~12, pages 345--370. Addison-Wesley, December 1993. \end{thebibliography} \end{myex} In order to have one presentation or the other, we can tell \bt the number of cross-references needed for an entry to be explicitly \cmd{cite}{}'d. We use the \verb+-min-crossrefs+ command line argument of \bt for that. For the first example above, I used \verb+bibtex biblio+, while the second example was obtained with \verb+bibtex -min-crossrefs=5 biblio+. One other important remark is that cross-referenced entries must be defined \emph{after} entries containing the corresponding \chp{crossref} field. And you can't embed cross-references, that is, you cannot \chp{crossref} an entry that already contains a \chp{crossref}. Last, the \chp{crossref} field has a particular behaviour: it always exists, whatever the bibliography style. If a \chp{crossref}{}'ed entry is included (either by a \cmd{cite} command or by \bt if there are sufficiently many \chp{crossref}{}s), then the entries cross-referencing it have their original \chp{crossref} field. Otherwise, that field is empty. \mysection{Quick tricks}\label{trucsbib} \mysubsection{How to get \emph{Christopher} abbreviated as \emph{Ch.}?} First names abbreviation is done when extracting names from the \chp{author} field. If the function is asked to abbreviate the first name (or any other part of it), it will return the first character of each ``word'' in that part. Thus \emph{Christopher} gets abbreviated into \emph{C.} Special characters provide a solution against this problem: If you enter \verb+{\relax Ch}ristopher+, the abbreviated version would be \verb+{\relax Ch}.+, which gives \emph{Ch.}, while the long version is \verb+{\relax Ch}ristopher+, \emph{i.e.} \emph{{Ch}ristopher}. \mysubsection{How to get caps in \texttt{von}?} Note: This part is somewhat technical. You should probably read and understand how \bt extracts names, which is explained at pages~\pageref{noms-start} and~\pageref{noms-end}. It may occur that the \verb+von+ part of a name begins with a capital letter. For some reason, the standard example is \emph{Maria De La Cruz}. The basic solution is to write \verb+"{\uppercase{d}e La} Cruz, Maria"+. When analyzing this name, \bt will place \verb+Cruz+ in the \verb+Last+ part, then \verb+Maria+ as the \verb+First+ name. Then \verb+{\uppercase{d}e La}+ is a special character, whose first letter is \verb+d+, and is thus placed in the \verb+von+ part. In that case, however, if you use an ``alphanumeric'' style such as \bst{alpha}, \bt will use the first character of the \verb+von+ part in the label\footnote{It could be argued \texttt{von} parts should not be used when computing the label, but classical style file do use it.}. But the first character here is \verb+{\uppercase{d}e La}+, and the label would be \verb+{\uppercase{d}e La}C+, and you'll get \texttt{[{\uppercase{d}e La}C]}. You'd probably prefer \texttt{[DLC]} or \texttt{[Cru]}. The second solution would then be \begin{verbatimtab} author = "{\uppercase{d}}e {\uppercase{l}}a Cruz, Maria" \end{verbatimtab} The label would be \verb+{\uppercase{d}}{\uppercase{l}}C+, which is correct. Another (easier) proposal would be \begin{verbatimtab} author = "{D}e {L}a Cruz, Maria" \end{verbatimtab} This also solves the problem, because \bt only considers characters at level~0 when determining which part a word belongs to, but takes all letters into account when extracting the first letter. \mysubsection{How to get lowercase letters in the \texttt{Last}?} This is precisely the reverse problem, but the solution will be different. Assume you cite a paper by the famous Spanish scientist \emph{Juan de la Cierva y Codorn\'\i u}. The basic ideas are \begin{verbatimtab} author = "de la Cierva {\lowercase{Y}} Codorn{\'\i}u, Juan" \end{verbatimtab} or \begin{verbatimtab} author = "de la Cierva {y} Codorn{\'\i}u, Juan" \end{verbatimtab} However, these solutions yields labels such as \verb+CYC+ or \verb+CyC+, where we would prefer \verb+CC+. Several solutions are possible: \begin{verbatimtab} author = "de la Cierva{ }y Cordon{\'\i}u, Juan" \end{verbatimtab} or \begin{verbatimtab} author = "de la {Cierva y} Cordon{\'\i}u, Juan" \end{verbatimtab} Both solutions work: In the first case, \bt won't see the space, and considers that the \verb+y+ belongs to the previous word. In the second case, \verb+Cierva y+ is at brace-level~$1$, and thus goes into the \verb+Last+ part, which has priority over the \verb+von+ part. \mysubsection{How to remove space between \texttt{von} and \texttt{Last}?} Here the example will be \emph{Jean d'Ormesson}. The best way to encode this appears to be \begin{verbatimtab} author = "d'\relax Ormesson, Jean" \end{verbatimtab} Indeed, the \nicmd{relax} commands will gobble spaces until the next non-space character. \mysubsection{How to get \emph{et al.} in the author list?} Some special bibliography styles will automatically replace long lists of authors with the name of the first author, followed by \emph{et al.} However, standard \bt styles won't. You can however get the same result by using the special name \verb+others+. For instance, if you enter \begin{verbatimtab} author = "Dupont, Jean and others" \end{verbatimtab} you get "Jean Dupont \emph{et al.}" in the resulting bibliography. \mysubsection{The \protect\nichp{key} field} It may happen that no author is given for a document. In that case, bibliography styles such as \bst{alpha}, when computing the ``label'' of such an entry, will use the \chp{key} field (the first three letters for \bst{alpha}, but the entire field for \bst{apalike}, for instance). When no \texttt{key} is given, the first three letters of the internal citation key are used. \bigskip Is it ok with everyone? Yes ?! Right, we can go to the next, most exciting part of this doc: How to create or modify a bibliography style...