[plug] LyX and BibTeX

[Peter Wright]

On Sun, Aug 29, 1999 at 03:37:29AM +0000, Christian wrote:
> Hi all,

Morning. Ooops, I mean afternoon.

> Has anyone ever gotten LyX and BibTeX working together?

<peers around the crowd of silent people>

Doesn't look like it so far, does it? :)

> I've made up a test set of references (using the barracuda front-end tool
> - but I'm roughly familiar with the format of the .bib file and the
> contents it produces look fine) and I include the bib file into the LyX
> document (as per the instructions in the LyX user's manual) but when I
> generate the PS output the bibliography is not included and all of the
> citations just don't work ([?]).

Argh :(. 

> If anyone has any suggestions, tips or pointers to useful documentation
> then I'd really appreciate it. (Is it just me or is BibTeX one of the
> worst documented pieces of software ever?  Or have I just been very
> unlucky when looking?  Everyone seems to gloss over it and tell you to
> buy the book.)

No, you haven't just been very unlucky when looking, BibTeX really is one
of the worst documented pieces of software ever. :)

Well, that's probably a bit harsh. Have you read the BibTeX documentation
included with the standard Debian teTeX install?

twilight 12:20 ttypts/2 ~ !14 $ ls -l /usr/doc/texmf/bibtex/base                   
total 118
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         2783 Jul  4  1994 bibshare
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         2306 Jul 20  1992 btxdoc.bib
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        53592 May 18  1995 btxdoc.dvi
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        13543 Jul 20  1992 btxdoc.tex.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        33120 May 18  1995 btxhak.dvi
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         8557 Jul 20  1992 btxhak.tex.gz

The btxdoc.dvi is the main useful manual - it's rather obtuse in places,
but as long as you have a reasonable grasp of LaTeX, etc., it's good enough
for most purposes.

Not having had much experience with LyX, I'd recommend you have a go from
the raw LateX perspective and see if that works - if so, then you can work
backwards and see what's gone wrong from the LyX end.

One thing I remember that caused me some problems initially with
LaTeX/BibTeX was that you have to run latex twice after running bibtex in
order to handle all the references correctly. So the routine is usually
(for files document.tex, document.bib):

latex document
bibtex document
latex document
latex document

Intuitive, I know. :)

> Regards,
> 
> Christian.

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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