BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Beginner trouble with BiBTeX

[byrnem6]

Hi,

I'm Mike and new to the forum.

I'm a relative newcomer to LaTeX and a complete beginner as regards BiBTeX.

I've been trying to use BiBTeX Version 0.99c with TeXnicCenter but it's not working. I'm using the "plain" style file. When BiBTeX is run, for every citation it says

Warning--I didn't find a database entry for "..."

And then says

Couldn't find the input index file "...\dissertation.idx"

An example of one of my biblio entries is

Code: Select all

@Article{Job_etal:2007,
  title = {Solitary wave trains in granular chains: experiments, theory and simulations},
  author = "St\'{e}phane Job and Francisco Melo and Adam Sokolow and Surajit Sen",
  journal = {Granular Matter},
  volume = {10},
  number = {1},
  pages = {13-20},
  year = {2007},
  month = {December},
  doi = {10.1007/s10035-007-0054-2},
  publisher = {Springer Berlin / Heidelberg}
}

which I've cited by

Code: Select all

\cite{Job_etal:2007}

.

Please let me know if you have any ideas!

Thanks, Mike

[benti]

The complaint about the .idx file is unrelated; that has to do with LaTeX being unable to find the index file belonging to the document. If you don't want to use indexing, it's easiest to tick off the option in the output profile you use to compile the document with.

As for Bibtex, this is a guess but I suppose you have put the bibliography file in a directory where BibTeX can't find it. It should either be in the appropriate place in the TDS (which is \localtexmf\bibtex), or in the directory where the .tex input document is also located. If you want to use another directory, you should specify it in the output profile (the command line option field for Bibtex that normally says "%bm" should include the entire path to the .bib file).

If this doesn't work, I can't help you. I'm sorta a beginner myself.

[byrnem6]

Thanks for your reply benti but I don't think that's the issue. I think BiBTeX can find my database file alright as in the log it says

The style file: plain.bst
Database file #1: biblio.bib

But then cannot find any of the database entries...

Ideas anyone?

[frabjous]

Are you running latex on it at least once before running bibtex on it?

The usual sequence is latex, bibtex, latex, latex to get your output.

[byrnem6]

Hi frabjous, yes that's the sequence I've been performing too. I'm just tried doing it using the command line and get the exact same errors

[frabjous]

If you upload the documents here (as attachments), I'll see if it works for me.

[byrnem6]

Thanks frabjous, here are the .tex and .bib files

[frabjous]

I got it to work, but I had to make several changes:

1. I renamed biblio.bib.txt to just biblio.bib -- BibTeX would not be able to find a .bib file that has an extra file extension. I suspect this was your main problem. (If you're in Windows, be sure to set things up to show file extensions rather than hide them; I hate how they've hidden them by default now.)

2. I commented out the line \input{./diss_title.tex} since you didn't attach that file.

3. I fixed the line that read \setlength{\textwidth{6.0in} to \setlength{\textwidth}{6.0in}.

Then I got errors when I tried to use BibTeX, so I had to edit the biblio.bib file in two places:

4. I removed the duplicate entry for flach:015112, which was in there twice.

5. In the entry one down from the first occurrence of flach:015112, I changed

author = "E. Hasco\"{e}t and H.J. Herrmann"

to

author = "E. Hasco{\"e}t and H.J. Herrmann"

BibTeX doesn't like accents done the other way for some reason.

Then it worked. I'm attaching the resultant PDF. Obviously, it's missing whatever is in diss_title.tex.

[byrnem6]

Many thanks for all your help, all I needed to do was give my database file the correct extension (*.bib and not *.bib.txt)

Thanks again,

Mike