natbib-like frontend for chicago-style macros

For some reason, the ACM has baked in chicago-like citation macros into the ACM SIG proceedings LaTeX templates instead of using the far superior natbib that literally everyone else on the planet uses. I'm much more accustomed to typing \citet as opposed to \shortciteN, \citeauthor as opposed to \shortciteANP, etc. So I decided to add this little translation table to my preamble:

\def\citet{\shortciteN}
\def\Citet{\shortciteN}
\def\citeauthor{\shortciteANP}
\def\Citeauthor{\shortciteANP}

\let\chicagociteyear\citeyear
\def\citeyearpar{\chicagociteyear}
\def\citeyear{\citeyearNP}

\def\citep{\shortcite}

Unfortunately, that means I can't use any of the optional arguments to \citep or \citet. If you are just looking for a translation table so you can use the chicago-style macros directly, try this:

natbib	chicago
\citet or \Citet	\shortciteN
\citeauthor or \Citeauthor	\shortciteANP
\citeyear	\citeyearNP
\citeyearpar	\citeyear
\citep	\shortcite

It's crazy how chicago-style macros sometimes use "N" to mean "noun" and other times to be the first half of "NP" being "no parentheses."

natbib-compatible BibTeX style (BST) file for Springer LNCS publications

UPDATE: Additionally, if you prefer "References" instead of "Bibliography", you have to re-define the \bibname macro in your document (e.g., just after you include natbib). Just add a

\rewewcommand\bibname{\refname}

or a

\renewcommand\bibname{References}

and you should be up and running with your desired bibliography name.

For some reason, the folks over at Springer do not like to make their BibTeX style (BST) files natbib compatible. This omission seems egregious when considering the kind of authors that would submit to journals and conferences that use LNCS-style formatting. Springer does provide LaTeX support files for LNCS, but the included BST file is not natbib compatible (because it was not built with natbib and author–year extensions turned on, which are needed in natbib even when numbered references are used). What makes things more difficult is that it is produced by hacking another BST (titto.bst) that was originally generated properly using makebst, and many of the hacks were already implemented natively in merlin.mbs. So much more of the postfix BST language was hacked directly rather than would have been necessary if the correct docstrip driver options were picked in the first place. So that makes it more challenging to reproduce a refactored version with additional natbib functionality without worrying about introducing regressions.

Nevertheless, I've done my best, and I've made the the natbib-compatible result splncsnat.bst available for download. I was able to remove the need for some of the manual editing by a smarter choice of docstrip options, but I still ended up having to create a patch on top of a stock docstrip-generated BST (the docstrip driver splncsnat-unpatched.dbj and patch splncsnat.patch are also available). Hopefully that helps someone out there.

• splncsnat.bst: natbib-compatible BST file for Springer LNCS-type publications

  Download and place splncsnat.bst in same directory as document's TeX source code. In the TeX preamble of the document, use

  \usepackage[numbers]{natbib}
  \bibliographystyle{splncsnat}

  and then in the text use macros like

  \cite{smith77}       % to get a "[1]" in the text
  \citep{smith77}      % to get a "[1]" in the text
  \citet{smith77}      % to get a "Smith [1]" in the text
  \citeauthor{smith77} % to get a "Smith" in the text

  The normal \bibliography{FILENAME} can be used at the end of the text where the BBL will be inserted by BibTeX.

• splncsnat-unpatched.dbj: docstrip driver used to generate splncsnat-unpatched.bst
• splncsnat.patch: patch used to generate splncsnat.bst from splncsnat-unpatched.bst (assuming version 4.20 [2007/04/24 (PWD, AO, DPC)] of merlin.mbs)

Of course, you need only splncsnat.bst to get up and running.

Tools for combining BibTeX, PDFs, and e-Readers

Quick links:

• fix_pdf_tags BibTeX+PDF+e-Reader management script
• bibtex_to_pdf Mercurial repository

UPDATE: If you are looking for a simpler solution that updates PDF's in your BibTeX database with the corresponding BibTeX data, check out updatepdf.pl. Be careful though; the old PDF::API2 module only supports Adobe PDF 1.4 (i.e., compatibility-mode PDF's).

UPDATE: Apparently, you can also manage your Kindle collections efficiently using emacs, using Calibre, or manually so long as you're okay with possibly having to reboot your Kindle after every change. So it would be possible for me to add Kindle collections.json support to my fix-pdf-tags script; I just don't anticipate having the time to do that in the near future (plus, I don't own a Kindle anymore, and so I wouldn't be able to test it).

In trying to migrate to e-Readers, I've been experimenting with both the Amazon Kindle 3 and the Sony Daily Reader PRS-950. They both have nice features... I don't have time to go into a review, but I'll give a teaser...

• Kindle PRO's: It has a nice web browser (that works on 3G too!), and makes it super easy to get new content onto the device. In fact, you can even download PDF's from Dropbox via the nifty browser (although e-mailing to your Amazon Kindle e-mail address is convenient too). Plus, Amazon makes for a nice e-Book store -- lots of the books I would want.
• Kindle CON's: However, PDF's really have to be in compatibility mode (Acrobat 1.4). Otherwise, the Kindle will miss all of the metadata. More importantly, it is basically impossibledifficult to manage collections through the USB. So if you have hundreds of PDF's, you'll spend days tagging them via the clunky Kindle keyboard.
  • UPDATE: Apparently, the Kindle uses a simple SHA-1 hash of the file's full path as a key in the collections.json file that is accessible via USB. Consequently, you can manage your collections data more efficiently. You can do so with an emacs script or with a calibre plugin or manually. However, you may have to reboot your Kindle every time you make a change. At least with the older Kindles, the collections.json file was only read on boot. It's possible that the newer Kindles are smart enough to refresh collections data every time the USB is unplugged (like the Sony does), but I honestly don't know. I have a feeling that Hannes, the author of bibtex-kindle, knows though.
• Sony Daily PRO's: It has the optical touch screen. It doesn't require compatibility-mode PDF's. It has a large screen. It has terrific page viewing options. In theory, the PDF note options are very nice, but e-Reader notes just seem tedious to me in general regardless of interface. More importantly, it is essentially an "open" platform so long as you are OK with a little bit of reverse engineering. It is easy to write a few scripts to manage your XML files, and so keeping your PDF's organized is easy for your average script kiddy.
• Sony Daily CON's: The optical touch screen means the screen is sunk down so far that it the chassis casts a small shadow around the edge of the screen. The Sony case-with-light isn't as nice as the Kindle's case-with-light. The Sony Bookstore doesn't have as many books (or at least the books I care about). The zoom modes leave much to be desired. In PDF's that work fine on the Kindle, trying to click a word for dictionary lookup often leads to selecting a phrase (and there's nothing you can do about it).

And there's plenty more to talk about, but those are the quick things off the top of my head. So it looks like I'm probably going to keep both... so I can have a diversity of e-Books available to me. Plus, the e-Book experience is a little nicer on the Kindle, but the PDF experience might be a little nicer on the Sony. It's hard to tell.

But what this post is really about is a utility I've put together that automatically manages my research PDF collection on either the Kindle or the Sony Reader. In particular,

• It updates PDF's with metatags to match author/editor/title information from a central BibTeX database.
• If you invoke it with a "kindle" argument, it converts PDF's to 1.4 so the Kindle can read the metatags.
• If you invoke it with a "reader" argument, it also automatically generates categories based on file hierarchy (i.e., the folders in which your PDF files live). In fact, symbolic links indicate that multiple tags should be applied to the same file (i.e., the target of the symbolic link).

So maybe that will be helpful to someone (at least as an example to generate some ideas). The project started out as something customized for me, but I've tried to make the documentation clear (see the chunk at the top to start). Plus, most of the important custom information (paths, preferences, etc.) are at the top of the script.

Check out the most recent version of my fix_pdf_tags script; it resides in my bibtex_to_pdf Mercurial repository where you can view its change history.

P.S. I know that Calibre is an existing software package that has very similar aims and a nice graphical environment. However, it really is a poor choice for managing PDF research. Plus, the Calibre folks have basically written off Kindle users as poor schmucks with hobbled readers. More importantly for me, I'm much happier with scripted solutions that can be fired off quickly.

natbib-compatible BST file for Royal Socety journals

I just whipped up rspublicnat.bst, which is a natbib-compatible BibTeX style file (BST) for the Royal Society journals (e.g., Proceedings of the Royal Society A and B and others).

FYI, the BST can be regenerated by applying LaTeX (i.e., docstrip) to rspublicnat.dbj and then applying rspublicnatbst.patch (with patch) to the resulting BST file. The patched result should closely match the Royal Society's bibliographic conventions for both in-line and listed references.

Perl script that generates CSV and BerkeleyDB versions of LTWA list

UPDATE: If you're wondering why I just didn't save the LTWA database and search it every time I needed to abbreviate a journal, it's because I wanted to optimize for speed downstream. That is, I did all the possible processing now to speed things up later. I've also augmented the script to do the opposite (and save the results in other smaller files) so that I can tell the downstream process to take longer (and possibly have better results with less spurious entries in the hash table). I've also updated the downstream script to save any successful lookups locally to speed up successive runs. Again, contact me if you want more details.

I'm sick of looking up ISO 4 standard journal abbreviations from the List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA) hosted at ISSN's LTWA online. The most annoying thing about LTWA online is that you can't get one big list unless you have them mail you a paper copy (for a price). So you have to resort to clicking each letter and waiting for the list for that letter to come up.

So I wrote a Perl script that automatically cURLs each LTWA online page down, processes it, and generates both CSV and BerkeleyDB (BDB) hash files containing a list of words and their associated official LTWA abbreviation. I use the BDB file in another script to automatically generate BibTeX database files for each of my journal papers (that script first checks a list of known-good journal abbreviations before trying to generate the abbreviation itself).

There were several challenges to such a task, and the list isn't perfect. I focused on one-word entries. For more complicated abbreviations, I figured I'd lean on my list of known-good journal abbreviations. That still left LTWA entries like "psycholog-" and "bulletin-" which use "-" to imply "and any other character." So I used a typical /usr/share/dict/words list to generate a list of English words that matched each pattern. Because such lists don't usually include plurals, I used Lingua::EN::Inflect to generate plurals and then took all of the plurals that included the singular (i.e., that would also match the LTWA pattern).

So that works well for me. Someday I might put the script and/or the files it produces on-line. For the moment, if you want any of these, contact me and let me know. I'll share.

BibTeX Bibliography Style File (BST) for Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (EAAI)

The Elsevier journal Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence suggests that authors use the elsart-harv.bst BibTeX bibliography style (BST) file to match its Harvard-style author-year reference format. However, elsart-harv.bst does not match the conventions used in EAAI proofs. In particular,

• EAAI proofs use "Thesis" (instead of "thesis")
• EAAI proofs surround the volume of an "in proceedings" entry with commas (instead of periods)
• EAAI proofs use "vol." (instead of "Vol.")
• EAAI proofs don't put any space between abbreviated parts of author names (but they do keep the hyphens in hyphenated abbreviations)

So I modified elsart-harv.bst to match EAAI conventions. My modified form is:

• elsart-harv-EAAI.bst

To use it, just download it, place it in the same directory as your compuscript, and change your

\bibliographystyle{elsart-harv}

line to

\bibliographystyle{elsart-harv-EAAI}

Of course, elsart-harv-EAAI.bst is still natbib compatible.

[ NOTE: More-advanced users may prefer my elsart-harv-EAAI.patch. ]

American Naturalist BibTeX BST style file

The American Naturalist, a University of Chicago Press - Journals Division journal, specifies that AASTeX should be used to typeset submissions; however, it does not provide any BibTeX BST bibliography style file. That means that authors still have to manually manage their reference list rather than using BibTeX and a central BIB bibliography database.

The BST: I've tried to remedy this by creating amnatnat.bst, a natbib-compatible BibTeX Bibliography STyle (BST) file for the American Naturalist.

As far as I can tell, this BST will generate a properly formatted BBL file that should not require modifications. Note that American Naturalist requires authors to upload their BBL files and NOT their BIB files (i.e., they don't have the ability to run BibTeX on the server).

ONE CAVEAT: If you have titles that contain colons in them, you will have to manually (either in the BIB or the BBL) change the case of the letter following the colon. For example, if "Some Title: Subtitle" is the title, change the "S" in "Subtitle" to "s". A feature/bug of BibTeX is that its sentence case keeps letters following colons capitalized. This does not match the sentence case definition used by many journals, which considers the words after a colon being at the middle of a sentence rather than the start of a new sentence. As far as I know right now, there is no easy way to change the BST file to do this automatically for you.

FYI: This BST file was generated using amnatnat.dbj (for more details, see amnatnat_full.dbj) and amnatnat.patch.

LaTeX for generating Behavioral Ecology manuscript

UPDATE: Check out a more complete math-oriented template/example, that I posted as behavecol_math_template.tex. This is ready to use out of the box. It has comments. It is setup for AMS math. It has table, figure, and autoreferencing examples too.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If using amsmath environments, be sure to check out my information on making lineno compatible with amsmath environments.

UPDATE: I have put behavecol_template.tex and behavecol.bst on-line so that you don't have to do any of the following to get them.

The Oxford Journal Behavioral Ecology is not setup for LaTeX manuscript submissions. This baffles me.

So, I spent some time putting together some macros and a BibTeX style file to get up and running with this journal.

First, a template (that uses the article document class), which fixes incompatibilities between figcaps, caption, and anything that uses \ref (see behavecol_template.tex for what is below, or see behavecol_math_template.tex for a more complete example):

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[paper=letterpaper,margin=1.5in]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}\doublespacing

\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage[%
            labelsep=newline,
            justification=RaggedRight,
            singlelinecheck=false,
            labelfont=bf,
            tableposition=top,
           ]{caption}
\captionsetup[table]{textfont=bf,position=above}
\makeatletter
\let\oldmakecaption\@makecaption
\makeatother

\usepackage[figon,printfigures]{figcaps}
\def\figurecapname{Figure legends}
\def\tablepagename{Tables}
\def\figurepagename{Figures}
 
\makeatletter
% This lets figcaps work with \ref
% However, forces \label outside of \caption
\def\phantomsection{\relax}
\let\oldfigurepage\@figurepage
\def\@figurepage{%
        \@ifundefined{tf@pof}{}{%
        \let\oldlabel\label%
        \let\oldinput\@input%
        \def\@input{\def\label{\oldlabel}\oldinput}%
        \phantomsection%
        \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\figurepagename}}%
        \oldfigurepage%
        }
\let\@makefcaption\@makecaption
\let\oldtablepage\@tablepage
\def\@tablepage{%
        \@ifundefined{tf@pot}{}{%
        \clearpage%
        \phantomsection%
        \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\tablepagename}}%
        \oldtablepage%
        }
\makeatother
\usepackage[subrefformat=subparens,labelformat=parens]{subfig}
\captionsetup[subfloat]{position=top}

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}

% Lines are numbered, starting at 1 
% (add pagewise to reset at each page)
%\usepackage[modulo,pagewise,mathlines]{lineno}
\usepackage[modulo,mathlines]{lineno}
\modulolinenumbers[1]
\firstlinenumber{1}
\linenumbers

\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{behavecol}
\setcitestyle{%
        authoryear,round,semicolon,%
        aysep={},%
        yysep={,},%
        notesep={, }%
        }

\usepackage{tocbibind}
\def\tocbibname{\refname}

\usepackage{varioref}
\labelformat{equation}{\textup{(#1)}}
\labelformat{enumi}{\textup{(#1)}}

\usepackage[%
            pdftitle={},
            pdfsubject={},
            pdfauthor={},
            pdfkeywords={},
            pdfstartview=FitH,
            bookmarks=true,bookmarksopen=true,
            breaklinks=true,
            colorlinks=false,
            pdfpagelabels=true,hypertexnames=true,
            plainpages=false,naturalnames=false,
            %draft,
            ]{hyperref}

% \Autoref is for the beginning of the sentence
\let\orgautoref\autoref
\providecommand{\Autoref}
    {\def\equationautorefname{Equation}%
     \def\figureautorefname{Figure}%
     \def\subfigureautorefname{Figure}%
     \def\Itemautorefname{Item}%
     \def\tableautorefname{Table}%
     \orgautoref}
 
% \Autorefs is plural for the beginning of the sentence
\providecommand{\Autorefs}
    {\def\equationautorefname{Equations}%
     \def\figureautorefname{Figures}%
     \def\subfigureautorefname{Figures}%
     \def\Itemautorefname{Items}%
     \def\tableautorefname{Tables}%
     \orgautoref}
 
% \autoref is used inside a sentence 
% (renew of the standard autoref)
\renewcommand{\autoref}{\Autoref}
 
% \autorefs is plural for inside a sentence
\providecommand{\autorefs}{\Autorefs}

\let\oldsection\section
\newcommand{\uppercasesection}[2][]{%
    \oldsection[#1]{\MakeUppercase{#2}}}
\newcommand{\uppercasesectionstar}[1]{%
    \oldsection*{\MakeUppercase{#1}}}
\makeatletter
\def\section{%
    \@ifstar{\uppercasesectionstar}%
            {\@dblarg{\uppercasesection}}}
\makeatother

\hypersetup{%
        pdftitle=
        {The title},
}
\title{The title}
\author{}
\date{}
     
\begin{document}
    
\maketitle
     
\begin{abstract}
% ...The abstract...
        \textit{Key words:} Keywords separated with comma+space, 
                            List ends with period.
        \hypersetup{%
        pdfkeywords=
        {Keywords separated with comma+space, 
         List ends with period},
        }
\end{abstract}
\newpage
     
% ...The document...
     
% The following line loads the references
\bibliography{the_bib_database_name}
     
\end{document}

Of course, remember to put table captions before the actual table insertion. In fact, it is important that the inside of a table environment has caption first, then label OUTSIDE of the caption, then the actual table content. Additionally, subfigures should be inserted (within a figure environment) with something like:

\subfloat[]{
% ... something like an \includegraphics ...
\label{fig:a}
}

Also, when you're ready to submit, get rid of the % on the %draft, line of the hyperref options. This will turn off all hyper linking, which will prevent strange little unlinked boxes from being drawn in your autogenerated proof.

Next, the bibliography style file, which I may end up posting later separately. As of right now, it has to be constructed from pieces. First, save the following as behavecol.dbj (see behavecol_full.dbj for more details):

%% Driver file to produce behavecol.bst from merlin.mbs
%% Generated with makebst, version 4.1 (2003/09/08)
%% Produced on 2007/08/23 at 12:02
%% 
\input docstrip
 
\preamble
----------------------------------------
*** Bibliography style for _Behavioral Ecology_. ***
 
\endpreamble
 
\postamble
End of customized bst file
\endpostamble
 
\keepsilent
 
\askforoverwritefalse
\def\MBopts{\from{merlin.mbs}{%
  ay,nat,nm-rvx,ed-rev,jnrlst,keyxyr,dt-beg,yr-per,note-yr,jxper,%
  jttl-rm,thtit-a,vnum-x,pp-last,num-xser,btit-rm,bt-rm,add-pub,%
  pre-edn,in-col,pp,abr,ednx,ord,jabr,xand,etal-xc,nfss,}}
\generate{\file{behavecol.bst}{\MBopts}}
\endbatchfile

and then run latex behavecol.dbj. Next, save the following to behavecol.patch:

--- behavecol.bst 2007-08-29 12:07:40.000000000 -0400
+++ behavecol_new.bst 2007-08-29 12:08:01.000000000 -0400
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
 FUNCTION {output.nonnull}
 { 's :=
   output.state mid.sentence =
-    { ", " * write$ }
+    { ". " * write$ }
     { output.state after.block =
         { add.period$ write$
           newline$
@@ -144,6 +144,9 @@
 FUNCTION {add.blank}
 {  " " * before.all 'output.state :=
 }
+FUNCTION {add.semicolon}
+{  ";" * before.all 'output.state :=
+}
 
 FUNCTION {date.block}
 {
@@ -248,7 +251,7 @@
 { "in" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.pages}
-{ "pp." }
+{ "p." }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.page}
 { "p." }
@@ -260,10 +263,10 @@
 { "Tech. Rep." }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.mthesis}
-{ "Master's thesis" }
+{ "[Master's thesis]" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.phdthesis}
-{ "Ph.D. thesis" }
+{ "[PhD thesis]" }
 
 FUNCTION {bbl.first}
 { "1st" }
@@ -488,6 +491,16 @@
     }
   if$
 }
+FUNCTION {format.book.pages}
+{ pages "pages" bibinfo.check
+  %duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
+  empty$ 'skip$
+    { add.semicolon 
+      add.blank 
+      pages "pages" bibinfo.check 
+      " " * bbl.pages * }
+  if$
+}
 FUNCTION {format.note}
 {
  note empty$
@@ -950,6 +963,10 @@
     }
   if$
 }
+FUNCTION {format.university.address}
+{ school "school" bibinfo.warn format.org.or.pub
+}
+
 FUNCTION {format.publisher.address}
 { publisher "publisher" bibinfo.warn format.org.or.pub
 }
@@ -1148,12 +1165,11 @@
   author format.key output
   format.date "year" output.check
   date.block
-  format.title
-  "title" output.check
-  new.block
+  format.title "title" output.check
+  add.blank
   bbl.mthesis format.thesis.type output.nonnull
-  school "school" bibinfo.warn output
-  address "address" bibinfo.check output
+  format.university.address output
+  format.book.pages output
   new.block
   format.note output
   fin.entry
@@ -1178,12 +1194,11 @@
   author format.key output
   format.date "year" output.check
   date.block
-  format.title
-  "title" output.check
-  new.block
+  format.title "title" output.check
+  add.blank
   bbl.phdthesis format.thesis.type output.nonnull
-  school "school" bibinfo.warn output
-  address "address" bibinfo.check output
+  format.university.address output
+  format.book.pages output
   new.block
   format.note output
   fin.entry

Then run

patch < behavecol.patch

from the same directory that you ran the DBJ command in. That should generate the behavecol.bst file that is needed for the above template to work.

Two small bugs in merlin.mbs

UPDATE: I've posted a patch file as well as a patched merlin.mbs that fixes this problem. If you prefer the patch option, execute

patch < merlin-fix-nm-rvvc.patch

in the same directory as your old merlin.mbs file. Be sure you're using the 4.20 (2007/04/24) version of merlin.mbs to start with (search through the file for the ProvidesFile line.

I just sent this to Patrick W. Daly. I think I've found two small bugs in merlin.mbs (from custom-bib), the master bibliography style used to generate many common BST files. They both involve adding an nm-rvvc near some existing nm-rvv lines.

I am referring to the 4.20 version of merlin.mbs. I think this is the latest version of the MBS file.

% \ProvidesFile{merlin.mbs}[2007/04/24 4.20 (PWD, AO, DPC)]

The bugs:

• In FUNCTION {sort.format.names} (lines 8394--8401)

  %<*!nm-init&!nm-rev&!nm-rev1&!nm-rv&!nm-rvx&!nm-rvcx&!nm-rvv>
  %<!vonx>      "{vv{ } }{ll{ }}{  ff{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %<vonx>      "{ll{ }}{  ff{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %</!nm-init&!nm-rev&!nm-rev1&!nm-rv&!nm-rvx&!nm-rvcx&!nm-rvv>
  %<*nm-init|nm-rev|nm-rev1|nm-rv|nm-rvx|nm-rvcx|nm-rvv>
  %<!vonx>      "{vv{ } }{ll{ }}{  f{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %<vonx>      "{ll{ }}{  f{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %</nm-init|nm-rev|nm-rev1|nm-rv|nm-rvx|nm-rvcx|nm-rvv>

  I think this should be:

  %<*!nm-init&!nm-rev&!nm-rev1&!nm-rv&!nm-rvx&!nm-rvcx&!nm-rvv&!nm-rvvc>
  %<!vonx>      "{vv{ } }{ll{ }}{  ff{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %<vonx>      "{ll{ }}{  ff{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %</!nm-init&!nm-rev&!nm-rev1&!nm-rv&!nm-rvx&!nm-rvcx&!nm-rvv&!nm-rvvc>
  %<*nm-init|nm-rev|nm-rev1|nm-rv|nm-rvx|nm-rvcx|nm-rvv|nm-rvvc>
  %<!vonx>      "{vv{ } }{ll{ }}{  f{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %<vonx>      "{ll{ }}{  f{ }}{  jj{ }}"
  %</nm-init|nm-rev|nm-rev1|nm-rv|nm-rvx|nm-rvcx|nm-rvv|nm-rvvc>

  Otherwise, I think this would cause problems sorting when authors might share last names and first initial.
• In FUNCTION {format.names.ed} (lines 4908--4929)

  %<*nm-rvv>
        "{f{.}.}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { tie.or.space.prefix bib.fname.font swap$ * }
        if$
        s nameptr
        "{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ bib.name.font *
        s nameptr
        "{jj}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { bib.fname.font " " swap$ * }
        if$
  %</nm-rvv>
  %<*!nm-rvv>
        "{ff}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { tie.or.space.prefix bib.fname.font swap$ * }
        if$
        s nameptr
        "{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ bib.name.font *
        s nameptr
        "{jj}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { bib.fname.font ", " swap$ * }
        if$
  %</!nm-rvv>

  I think this should be:

  %<*nm-rvv|nm-rvvc>
        "{f{.}.}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { tie.or.space.prefix bib.fname.font swap$ * }
        if$
        s nameptr
        "{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ bib.name.font *
        s nameptr
        "{jj}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { bib.fname.font " " swap$ * }
        if$
  %</nm-rvv|nm-rvvc>
  %<*!nm-rvv&!nm-rvvc>
        "{ff}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { tie.or.space.prefix bib.fname.font swap$ * }
        if$
        s nameptr
        "{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ bib.name.font *
        s nameptr
        "{jj}" format.name$ duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
          { bib.fname.font ", " swap$ * }
        if$
  %</!nm-rvv&!nm-rvvc>

  That actually looks like it will give a formatting error on output!

So hopefully those'll get fixed, right? Am I missing something? Am I wrong?

A reflection on (Springer) bibliographies (junior-part commas)...

In my previous post about Springer journal typesetting, I present the BiBTeX bibliography style files spmpsci.bst and spmpscinat.bst that were mostly generated by the docstrip driver files spmpsci.dbj and spmpscinat.dbj, respectively. I say mostly because I discovered that the original bibliography style files distributed by Springer were generated by docstrip but then manually hacked to remove the comma before the junior part (e.g., "Joe Public, Jr.") of the author and editor names.

You see, there is no way to use docstrip drivers based on merlin.mbs (from custom-bib) to have commas between author names and yet no commas before junior parts. Springer actually used the merlin.mbs option nm-rvv to get rid of commas and then hacked in between-author commas. I used the nm-rvvc option to include between-author commas and then hacked out the junior-part commas. The result is the same.

I have no problem listing author names without junior parts. As I mention in a Google groups thread, on page 3 of The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, it is stated that the "Jr." after a last name should not have a comma before it (e.g., William Strunk Jr.). A number of journals agree with this, including The Journal of Mathematical Biology (i.e., a Springer journal using the Springer spmpscinat BiBTeX bibliography style).

At first I completely agreed with Springer and thought that merlin.mbs needed to be updated so that it had a junior part comma option. However, I gave it more thought and now I think that Springer should cease and desist. For one, this makes it difficult to regenerate the BST file from the DBJ driver options. The BST file distributed by Springer doesn't even mention that some manual editing has gone on, so anyone trying to generate their BST file will probably miss this hack. Second, while I think that authors who insert commas in their names need to stop this practice, if an author chooses to make his or her professional name comma-delimited, then journals should respect that author's wishes. Finally, if the BST junior-part comma is left in, commas can still be omitted by surrounding the junior (e.g., "Jr.") and the last name (e.g., "Smith") with curly braces (e.g., "{Smith Jr.}") in the BIB file. I haven't tested this, but I think that if this is done the Jr. becomes part of the BiBTeX last name (e.g., "{ll}") and thus there will be no comma before the junior in the resulting bibliography.

I'm sure Springer would tell me that they just want the bibliography entries to be consistent. However, names are messy things to mess with. Plus, modern-day BST files really should be specified entirely by a set of standard docstrip options (i.e., docstrip options and an MBS file). If non-standard options are really needed, a new MBS file should be distributed and the BST file should be spcified by options for that new MBS file. Would that be so hard to do for a publisher?

So that's my thought... Hey, publishers! Leave them BST files alone!

spmpscinat.bst: A natbib style file for Journal of Mathematical Biology (e.g., Springer journals)

UPDATE: I learned how to use custom-bib's makebst. I've updated the spmpscinat.bst file in a more proper way by using makebst. I also regenerated the spmpsci.bst file so it properly reverses editor names to match the JMB format. I will submit these to JMB and hopefully they'll use them. FYI, these were mostly generated from spmpscinat.dbj and spmpsci.dbj, respectively.

I was frustrated to find out that the Journal of Mathematical Biology (JMB) has been using some outdated LaTeX support files. In particular, they distribute a BiBTeX style file that has no support for natbib use (or anything similar, like apacite). This appears to be less of a problem with JMB and more of a problem with Springer in general (i.e., most of its journals). They actually expect people to type the names of the authors that they reference directly (either that or use references (e.g., [2]) as nouns, which is bad style even though it saves space)! Can you believe that?

Civilized people use a package like natbib to do something like \citet{SK86} on every textual citation, which will then generate "Stephens and Krebs (1986)" (in Harvard mode) or "Stephens and Krebs [61]" (in numerical mode). There are lots of good reasons to do this. For one, it prevents me from accidentally turning "Krebs" into "Krbes".

To deal with this, I took the abbrvnat.bst style file packaged with natbib and hacked its support into the spmpsci.bst file from Springer. The result is spmpscinat.bst, which seems to work as desired for most bibliography entries I have tried.

I don't have a lot of experience with working with BiBTeX support files, so I have a feeling that it would have been better to use custom-bib to generate a BiBTeX style file in the JMB format that would be compatible with natbib. I may do that later.

So basically, I reserve the right to update or changed spmpscinat.bst at any time and without any notice, so look out for updates.