BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Natbib square and numbers do not work

[daavidb]

To be able to use the sort option I switched to natbib. Sort seems to work, but the style of citation was switched from numeric with square brackets to author-year with paranthesis. I tried using:

\usepackage[numbers,square,sort]{natbib}

..but I still see:

"Aldous and Fill (200X); Dembo et al. (2004)"

...instead of [1,2], which is what I want.

Here is an example .tex file:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[numbers,square,sort]{natbib}

\begin{document}

\title{Natbib doesn't work}

\section*{0 Introduction}


See for instance \cite{DemboPeresEtAl-CoverTimesforBMandRWin2D,aldous-fill:book}.


\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{bibliography}

\end{document}

And here is the file bibliography.bib:

Code: Select all

@Book{ aldous-fill:book,
	Author = "David J. Aldous and James A. Fill",
	Title = "{Reversible {M}arkov Chains and Random Walks on Graphs}",
	Publisher = "Book in preparation, \texttt{http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/\char126aldous/RWG/book.html}",
	Year = "200X"
}


@Article{ DemboPeresEtAl-CoverTimesforBMandRWin2D,
	author = "Amir Dembo and Yuval Peres and Jay Rosen and Ofer Zeitouni",
	title = "{Cover times for Brownian motion and random walks in two dimensions.}",
	year = "2004",
	doi = "10.4007/annals.2004.160.433"
}

[localghost]

Your example works fine for me as is. Did you test especially this code before asking?


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten

[daavidb]

Source code in every form has to be tagged as such by using the »Code« environment of the forum software (see Board Rules, to be read before posting). This keeps a post clear and legible.

Fixed. Sorry about that.

Your example works fine for me as is. Did you test especially this code before asking?

Just tried again and exactly that code yields the attached PDF file, which has "See for instance Aldous and Fill (200X); Dembo et al. (2004)." instead of the expected "See for instance [1,2]". You really get the latter? Could you attach your natbib.sty file to a message with exactly the commands you use to compile the file so I can try with that*?

David

* If I put your natbib.sty file in the directory of the .tex-file latex will use that instead of the pre-installed natbib, right?

[localghost]

[…] You really get the latter? Could you attach your natbib.sty file to a message with exactly the commands you use to compile the file so I can try with that*? […]

Yes I did. But it is not necessary to attach the package file. Just add the \listfiles command as very first line to your example and search the log file for the list of used files.

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*File List*
 article.cls    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
  size10.clo    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
  natbib.sty    2010/09/13 8.31b (PWD, AO)
natbib-prblm.bbl
 ***********

So this might be a matter of an outdated package and you should update your TeX system. Works for me also with version 8.31a of the natbib package.

[…] * If I put your natbib.sty file in the directory of the .tex-file latex will use that instead of the pre-installed natbib, right?

That's correct. But also this version seems to be outdated on your machine.

[daavidb]

[…] You really get the latter? Could you attach your natbib.sty file to a message with exactly the commands you use to compile the file so I can try with that*? […]

Yes I did. But it is not necessary to attach the package file. Just add the \listfiles command as very first line to your example and search the log file for the list of used files.

Code: Select all

*File List*
 article.cls    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
  size10.clo    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
  natbib.sty    2010/09/13 8.31b (PWD, AO)
natbib-prblm.bbl
 ***********

I have:

Code: Select all

 *File List*
 article.cls    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
  size10.clo    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
  natbib.sty    2010/09/13 8.31b (PWD, AO)
  natbib.cfg
natbibproblem.bbl
 ***********

I seem to be using the exact same files except that I have natbib.cfg in there. Could this be messing things up?

[localghost]

I have:

Code: Select all

 *File List*
 article.cls    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
  size10.clo    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
  natbib.sty    2010/09/13 8.31b (PWD, AO)
  natbib.cfg
natbibproblem.bbl
 ***********

I seem to be using the exact same files except that I have natbib.cfg in there. Could this be messing things up?

This might be the culprit. But this file list alone doesn't help us in this case. I suggest to attach the complete log file to your next post by uploading it to the forum server. This way we can find out where »natbib.cfg« is located on your machine. The natbib manual mentions this file as option for general settings. So I assume that deleting this file will solve the problem.

[daavidb]

I have:

Code: Select all

 *File List*
 article.cls    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
  size10.clo    2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
  natbib.sty    2010/09/13 8.31b (PWD, AO)
  natbib.cfg
natbibproblem.bbl
 ***********

I seem to be using the exact same files except that I have natbib.cfg in there. Could this be messing things up?

This might be the culprit. But this file list alone doesn't help us in this case. I suggest to attach the complete log file to your next post by uploading it to the forum server. This way we can find out where »natbib.cfg« is located on your machine. The natbib manual mentions this file as option for general settings. So I assume that deleting this file will solve the problem.

Problem solved!

Creating an empty natbib.cfg file in the directory of the tex-file solved it. There must be a bad natbib.cfg somewhere on my system (haven't found it yet), which was overriding the square option.

Thank you very much for the help localghost!

[localghost]

[…] Creating an empty natbib.cfg file in the directory of the tex-file solved it. There must be a bad natbib.cfg somewhere on my system (haven't found it yet), which was overriding the square option. […]

That's why I asked for the complete log file. I think it's better to delete this configuration file in order to avoid future problems. The log file will allow us to find out where it is.

But now that the problem is solved, please mark the topic (not the last post) accordingly.