General ⇒ Bibliography style file help

[FreddieWidgeon]

Can some kind soul here please help to put me out of my misery and provide details on how to create a customised .bst file?

I'm working on my thesis in LaTeX and need to format the references in a particular University defined style for which a .bst file does not exist. After a lot of work with the excellent custom-bib I was able to create something approximately correct but unfortunately not close enough. A search on Google for details on how to modify the resulting .bst file lead to an unsuccessful attempt to learn the postfix language used in them.

The University style is defined as the following:

This is a journal [1] a book [2], proceedings [3]and a PhD thesis [4].

References
[1] A.N. Other, F. Ake, O. Ther, “Citing a journal article”, The LaTeX Journal, 29 (7), pages 634-635 (1993)
[2] X. Ample, "The book of styles", Book Publishing Group, London, ISBN 1-23456-789-0 (2007)
[3] S.P.E. Kerr, R.I. Terr, "The spoken word", Proceedings of the International LaTeX Conference, Bangalore, pages 896-987 (1989)
[4] S. Cape, "High-speed word-processing", PhD Thesis, Brunell University (1985)

References should be listed in the order in which they were made in the main text. The title of journal articles, books, theses, etc. should be in italic face and between sexed double quote marks. Citations for Masters theses are the same general style as PhD theses but state Masters thesis instead. For case where the volume and issue of an itemis known and relevant it is given in bold followed by a space and then the issue number in brackets in normal face.

Can anyone please help with a .bst file to produce this style or a simple and easy to follow guide on how to adapt an existing file to produce the required results?

Thanks,
Freddie

[localghost]

Take a look at the little TeX program called makebst. You have to answer a few questions to customize your style file. Run latex on it and you will get a result.

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latex makebst

A documentation should be available on your system. Just use the console.

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texdoc makebst

[FreddieWidgeon]

Thanks localghost, I've given makebst a try. Unfortunately it appears to give me the option of having the titles in italics or in quote marks but not both together. Am I doing something stupid?

Freddie

[FreddieWidgeon]

This file is the closest I can get with makebst but the article titles are not in italics. Can anyone please advise me how to hack the file to achieve the final step in the formatting?

Freddie

[pumpkinegan]

If I understand correctly, you just want the title enclosed in quotation marks and italicized.

Open the hwtwo.bst file with a text editor (for example, TeXnicCenter)
Locate line 728: FUNCTION {format.title}
Go to line 736 and modify

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"\enquote{" swap$ *

to be

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"\enquote{" swap$ emphasize *

Save hwtwo.bst

Note that with hwtwo.bst you also have a booktitle that is italicized but not enclosed by quotation marks (as you had previously wanted). To remedy this:
Locate line 814: FUNCTION {format.btitle}
Go to line 818 and modify

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emphasize

to be

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"\enquote{" swap$ emphasize * "}" *

Save hwtwo.bst

I also think that this will give the desired results for phdthesis and proceeding formatting, but I am not sure. Remember to put the .bst file where LaTeX can find it, and then to refresh the filename database.

Patrick.

[FreddieWidgeon]

Many thanks Patrick, that is exactly the format I required.

Freddie.