[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX (plain) consistency thestery with @inproceedings entries

bibtex

I've been using BibTeX (with the plain.bst bibliography style) for years. Today I noticed something odd: Publisher information is laid out in two quite inconsistent styles, depending on whether an address is given. To be more precise, consider the entries

@inproceedings{kasher/approx-a,
  author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
  title = {Two-source extractors secure against quantum adversaries},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Approximation,
    and the 14th International conference on Randomization, and combinatorial
    optimization: algorithms and techniques},
  series = {APPROX/RANDOM'10},
  year = {2010},
  pages = {656--669},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address = {Berlin}}

@inproceedings{kasher/approx-b,
  author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
  title = {Two-source extractors secure against quantum adversaries},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Approximation,
    and the 14th International conference on Randomization, and combinatorial
    optimization: algorithms and techniques},
  series = {APPROX/RANDOM'10},
  year = {2010},
  pages = {656--669},
  publisher = {Springer}
 }

These entries are identical, except that the "-a" entry has an address. BibTeX, with the plain.bst style, will lay these out as follows:

BibTeX plain inproceedings

Note that when there is no address, the publisher data (name and publication year) are laid out together, after a period; when there is a location, the publisher data is broken up so that the publisher name is after the period, but date and address are before the period.

Question: Can anyone defend this behavior? If not, is BibTeX actively developed any more or, more to the point, is there any hope of having this addressed?

By the way, this nonsense does not exist with the @incollection entry type. The two entries

@incollection{kohayakawa2-a,
  author={Y. Kohayakawa},
  title={{Szemer\'{e}di's} regularity lemma for sparse graphs},
  booktitle={Foundations of Computational Mathematics},
  editor={F. Cucker and M. Shub},
  pages={216--230},
  address={Berlin},
  publisher={Springer},
  year={1997}
}

@incollection{kohayakawa2-b,
  author={Y. Kohayakawa},
  title={{Szemer\'{e}di's} regularity lemma for sparse graphs},
  booktitle={Foundations of Computational Mathematics},
  editor={F. Cucker and M. Shub},
  pages={216--230},
  publisher={Springer},
  year={1997}
}

produce the satisfactory output:
BibTeX plain incollection

Best Answer

from the file btxdoc.pdf ("bibtexing"), p.7:

10 . The PROCEEDINGS and INPROCEEDINGS entry types now use the address fi eld to tell where a conference was held, rather than to give the address of the publisher or organization. If you want to include the publisher's or organization's address, put it in the publisher or organization fi eld.

i won't try to justify this; in fact, i think it's terribly confusing. but it does explain the result that you're seeing.

Related Question