[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX: Defining own styles

biblatexbibliographiesbibtex

I'm using LaTeX with BibTeX to display the literature of my thesis. We have to adapt our work to several custom 'styles' from the university. That's why I want to somehow define my own styles: For each entry type the given style can be different and further, the displaying in the bibliography and in a cite is different. I don't know if it's quite 'easy' to define my own styles in BibTeX so that I could 'invent' new entry types, let's say

entryTypeA
entryTypeB
entryTypeC

and than define the style of each how to display it in the bibliography and how when citing it with \cite{} and how when citing it with \footcite{}, etc.? Something like

entryTypeA:
bibliography="@Autor, @Title in year @Year, @Publisher"
cite="@Autor, @Year"

entryTypeB:
bibliography="@Autor, @Year, @Title, @Address"
cite="@Autor: @Title"

etc. (just examples).

Best Answer

The type of implementation that the OP is looking for closely matches that of the new Bibulous project. With Bibulous, customized styles are implemented with templates, so that for book and manual entry types, one can define bibliography styles with, for example,

book = <author>, \enquote{<title>,} in <year>, <publisher>.
manual = <author>, <year>, \enquote{<title,}[, <address>].

where I've tried to match the style to the OP's suggestion. Each field in the database file is referenced with the <.> notation inside the template. Then, if one wishes to create customized citation labels, one can use

citelabel = <author>, <year>

citelabel = <author>: <title>

These definitions are placed into Bibulous' style template (BST) file. Many other customizations are available, as listed in the project documentation.

I don't deprecate any testing ;-) -- all standard styles are available as biblatex styles here: trad-biblatex

The following remarks requires biblatex 2.0 or newer!

The aim is to setup standard bibliography styles which allow all modifications provided by BibLaTeX. In the first step the implementation of the entry types @BOOK, @ARTICLE and @INCOLLECTION are on focus. The implemented styles are marked by a green check mark ;-)

Preface

The traditional BibTeX styles are providing the following fields and entry types.

Entry types:

article  book  booklet  inbook  incollection 
inproceedings conference manual mastersthesis 
misc phdthesis proceedings techreport unpublished

fields:

address   author    booktitle    chapter    edition
editor    howpublished    institution    journal
key    month    note    number    organization
pages    publisher    school    series    title
type    volume    year

All traditional fields and entry types are provided by BibLaTeX too. However BibLaTeX offers more entry types and fields. So I recommend by using BibLaTeX to change the bib entries related to BibLaTeX.

Modifications

The basic order and settings for all standard styles are equal. So I am providing a file trad-standard.bbx which yields the standard settings. The extra settings are done in the required bbx files.

First I collect some details of the style:

the sorting is chronological by AUTHOR then title then YEAR
Names are printed as: Firstname (no initials) Surname
all names are printed; et~al. is set as a replacement of and others in the field
the field title is printed with emphasis for the entry types:
```
book  inbook  manual  phdthesis  proceedings
```

the field title is printed as normal for the entry types:

article  booklet  conference incollection  inproceedings
mastersthesis  misc  techreport  unpublished

all other fields are printed as \normalfont
the journal title isn't introduced by a string in, excluding @incollection
_{ordering of entries can be seen in the examples}

Style `plain`

all entries are numbered

Style `unsrt`

equal to the style plain
sorting scheme is none.

Style `alpha`

NOTE: requires biber

standard with a label

Style `abbrv`

equal to plain
usage of abbreviation

Usage

This current development branch can be found at github: biblatex-trad

All traditional bibliography styles can be loaded via options by the package biblatex:

\usepackage[style=trad-plain]{biblatex}

This method allows the using of all options provided by biblatex. Available styles will be (not yet):

trad-plain which emulated plain
trad-unsrt which emulated unsrt
trad-alpha which emulated alpha
trad-abbrv which emulated abbrv

_{I hope I didn't forget any traditional style}

Some technical hints will be collected in the documentation.

Documentation

A small documentation is available at biblatex-trad

Results:

trd-plain

enter image description here

References

Based on the example given by lockstep here the required result:

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] Bibliography details (volume, page numbers) not printed

A tradition that I believe was inaugurated by the BibTeX mode of Emacs, to which TeXStudio (formerly TeXMakerX) adheres, is that optional fields in a bibliographic entry are prefixed by OPT. So when you ask for a new @article entry, you get something like

@Article{,
  author = {},
  title = {},
  journal = {},
  year = {},
  OPTkey = {},
  OPTvolume = {},
  OPTnumber = {},
  OPTpages = {},
  OPTmonth = {},
  OPTnote = {},
  OPTannote = {}
}

(maybe with bullets to stand for the field contents). This is because some of the fields are optional and some are ignored by the standard styles, but are useful anyway. The only mandatory fields for an article are author, title, journal and year.

Since the rule of BibTeX is to ignore unknown fields, those prefixed with OPT will be ignored whether filled or empty. But if you fill them you have also to remove the OPT prefix. So, in your case, the entry should look like

@Article{Pope00,
  author = {Pope, R.J. and Millington, A.C.},
  title = {Unravelling the patterns of alluvial fan development using mineral magnetic
           analysis: examples from the {Sparta} basin, {Lakonia}, southern {Greece}},
  journal = {Earth surface processes and landforms},
  year = {2000},
  volume = {25},
  pages = {601-615},
}

Note also that, contrary to what's found in many guides, it's preferable to brace the entire word we want to maintain the capitalization of, so that kerning will be applied between all the letters.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to emulate the traditional BibTeX styles (plain, abbrv, unsrt, alpha) as closely as possible with biblatex