[texhax] Help with displaying optional bibliography fields withBibtex

[Thomas Jacobs]

Philip,

Thanks very much for the reply and explanation.

Tom

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Philip G. Ratcliffe
<philip.ratcliffe at fastwebnet.it> wrote:
>> Newbie question.  I am trying to understand where to look if
>> I have bibtex entries with optional fields such as month in
>> an article entry and they are not displayed in my
>> bibliography.  I am using a style file recommended for
>> Finance papers (jf.bst) but am unfamiliar with the details of
>> how such files work with/control bibliography entries. I
>> scanned through the style file and found the following entry:
>>
>> FUNCTION {article}
>> { output.bibitem
>>   format.authors "author" output.check
>>   author format.key output
>>   format.date "year" output.check
>>   format.title "title" output.check
>>   crossref missing$
>>     { journal emphasize "journal" output.check
>>       format.vol.num.pages output
>>     }
>>     { format.article.crossref output.nonnull
>>       format.pages output
>>     }
>>   if$
>>   note output
>>   fin.entry
>> }
>>
>> which coincidently seems to specify just year for date format
>> on an article.  Is this typical or am I mistaken?  Is the
>> workaround to create a year entry with month and date
>> included in my bibtex entries or is this a bad idea?  Thanks.
>
> Your analysis is correct: this BibTeX style does not include month and day.
> Either you find a style already made that does what you want or you have to
> hack the bst you're using.  The latter is relatively simple once you know
> what you're doing, but you would have to learn a little of the language and
> programming used.  If you feel up to it, most (I think) distros include a
> file called btxhak.dvi, which explains the basics fairly well.
>
> Good luck, Phil
>
>



-- 
Thomas Jacobs