BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ bibtex and .tex.aux

[Dremos]

Hello there,
I'm experiencing some trouble upon trying to generate the bibliography in the document I'm writing. First of all, when I built the main file (thesis.tex in my case) the compilation ends with the following message:
"I couldn't open file name 'C:\Thesis\thesis.tex.aux'"
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this corresponds to the execution of bibtex (TeXnicCenter does the latex&bibtex compiling all at once?). I read somewhere that this could be solved by (a) changing the filename since MS-DOS has problems dealing with too long filenames or (b) changing the thesis.aux file to thesis.tex.aux. Since (a) is not my problem I tried (b) and that seems to do the trick... Then I use Bibtex once, get several warnings saying that my bib entries are not style-defined, and after that I build it twice to obtain the thesis.pdf with the bibliography with the references, but I can't see the references and none \cite{} and \ref{} in the resulting pdf appear (there are ?? symbols instead).

Btw, I'm using TeXnicCenter and Miktex 2.8 on Vista (pdflatex).

Thanks in advance!

[frabjous]

Is it possible that your file is erroneously named thesis.tex.tex rather than thesis.tex? With the hugely annoying way Windows has of hiding file extensions, sometimes problems like that can come up. I'd change your view settings in Windows Explorer to show file extensions and see if that's the case. If it's not that, I wonder if your TeXnicCenter is configured right. It should be configured to look for thesis.aux, not thesis.tex.aux (unless your file is indeed misnamed as thesis.tex.tex, which again you'll want to check.)

With regard to the lack of style info, are you using a \bibliographystyle{...} command in your document? If you continue to have problems, try posting a minimal working example.

[Dremos]

Thanks you very much for your reply frabjous.

The extension issue is something I double checked long time ago, unfortunately it's not that.
I was given a really complicated template some time ago. Before I post a minimal working example I'll have to read the link you gave me carefully and get rid of those packages I'm not using I'm afraid . As for your question, this is how I call the bib file (ref.bib) from thesis.tex

\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{ref}

As soon as I have some time I'll try posting it (I'm in bit of a hurry here).

[frabjous]

There are two ways of creating a minimal example. One is from the top down, removing the unnecessary parts of your document. Another is from the bottom up, creating a new document and keep inserting things into it until the problem creeps in.

Try saving the following as test.tex:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{sample}
\end{document}

with sample.bib:

Code: Select all

@article{ samplearticle,
    author = {Jane Doe},
    title = {A Nice Title},
    journal = {The Journal of Nothing},
    volume = {72},
    year = {1972},
    pages = {1--10}
}

If this works, it'll at least help to determine whether or not the problem is specific to your thesis, or comes in for every BibTeX document with how your TXC is configured.

[Dremos]

I got the same problem with your files! What could it be?

[Dremos]

In case it helps, in Build/Define output profiles I've got pdflatex.exe as the tex compiler, and the command line arguments passed to the compiler are:
-shell-escape -interaction=nonstopmode -max-print-line=120 "%pm"
and of course bibtex.exe for bibtex

[frabjous]

I don't use Windows, and so cannot use TeXnicCenter. I don't know much about configuring it. Maybe someone with access to TXC can give more concrete advice.

You could try running:

Code: Select all

pdflatex test
bibtex test
pdflatex test
pdflatex test

from a DOS prompt and see if that works. (You don't need to put in the extensions; it should figure those out; but if you want to, though, it's .tex for pdflatex and .aux for bibtex.) You may need to give the full path to pdflatex and biblatex; not sure. I don't touch Microsoft operating systems if I can help it.

[Dremos]

ok, like that your file works and the bibliography is printed (first time I make it, *clap* ), but not mine, so it must be something else. Thanks for the help anyway!

[frabjous]

Do you mean you ran:

Code: Select all

pdflatex thesis
bibtex thesis
pdflatex thesis
pdflatex thesis

From the DOS prompt and it still didn't work?

If so, could you post the thesis.blg (BibTeX log) file that was generated (or should have been generated) when you ran BibTeX? (You may need to rename it, paste it in a code box, or put it in a .zip file to post it here.)

[Dremos]

Hi again frabjous,

I kind of solved the problem (problems) by getting rid of all those packages I wasn't using and I also stopped using TeXnicCenter. From the DOs prompt things begin to work properly and that's all I need .

Thanks for your help!