bibtex
This should be a basic question, but my search engine is failing me. Where do I go to download .bst files for LaTeX/bibtex?
Precise format is flexible but I want something that will work with natbib and author-year formats, and that can gracefully handle urls as @misc entries.
To parse BibTeX format files, Biber uses a C library called "btparse" which is, for all intents and purposes, 99.9% compatible with BibTeX. So, You should rarely have problem using Biber as a drop-in replacement for BibTeX. As mentioned by others, the issue is rather the slightly different data model which biblatex has compared with the data model in BibTeX.
So, your question really relates to the difference in data models between plain BibTeX and BibLaTeX, regardless of whether you are using Biber as the biblatex backend. Be aware that in the future, around BibLaTeX 2.x, BibTeX will no longer be supported as a biblatex backend as it has too many limitations. Of course BibTeX format data files will always be supported.
The more important question is, as you mention, what the advantages of Biber might be even if you are not using any of the biblatex data model specifics. Here are some advantages of Biber in this respect (you can get an idea by searching for the string "Biber only" in the biblatex manual), omitting the features which require data source changes:
.bib (currently RIS, Zotero RDF/XML, Endnote XML).bib files available via ftp or http)biblatex manual for a very good explanation of this with examples..bib data as it is read by Biber, without changing the actual data source itself. YouThis last feature is particularly interesting for you as you can potentially map your pure BibTeX .bib files into the biblatex model on the fly as Biber reads them but without altering the files. It's also very useful for dropping fields like abstract which often cause trouble due to LaTeX reserved characters.
There are also some other features implemented in Biber which are available in BibLaTeX 2.x:
I forgot to mention that Biber automatically applies the BibLaTeX field and entrytype mappings (address -> location etc.) mentioned in the documentation. It does this by implementing some driver-level source mappings (see \DeclareSourcemap and its variants in the biblatex documentation).
I suggest you proceed as follows:
Open your modified copy of apalike.bst in a text editor. (The program you use to edit your tex files will do fine.)
Immediately after the function output.check, add the following 3 lines of code:
FUNCTION {add.blank}
{ " " * before.all 'output.state :=
}
In the article function, locate the line that says
{ journal emphasize "journal" output.check
Immediately after this line (and hence immediately before the line that says format.vol.num.pages output), insert a new line with following text:
add.blank
Save the bst file
Rerun LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX once more to recreate the formatted bibliography
Happy BibTeXing!
Addendum to address the OP's follow-up question, about how to handle an entry which is "In press", i.e., which hasn't been published yet and for which the volume, number, and pages fields are not yet available.
I believe you should put the "In Press" information in the year field, not the note field. If the article hasn't been published yet, it's better to write "In press" in the year field; before you know it, the publication year might slip from 2018 to 2019 or even 2020... Optional: Use a \noopsort directive to help BibTeX with figuring out how to sort the entry. And, place an \unskip directive in the entry's volume field to undo the output of the add.blank directive.
\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{mybib.bib}
@preamble { "\providecommand\noopsort[1]{}" }
@Article{Author:InPress,
Title = {Thoughts},
Author = {Adrian A. Author},
Journal = {Journal of Bib\TeX{}ing},
Year = {\noopsort{2019}In Press},
volume = {\unskip},
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[round]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{apalike-nocomma} % modified form of 'apalike.bst'
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}
Best Answer
more than 150 bst files are already on your TeX-distribution. You can browse that directory, which can easily be found by running
e.g. for Linux and TeXLive:
For Windows open a command window (Start->cmd) and run the command.
For my system all known bst-files are in