BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Bibliography messed up

[shouldknowbetter]

Dear all,

I am using Kile on Kubuntu 10.10. Basically, my task is to write an annotated bibliography. Each element in this will be a book/journal article/conference proceedings entry.

If I've understood things correctly, what I am meant to be doing is starting a "thebibliography" section and putting in entries as follows:

Code: Select all

@Book{,
 title = {What Went Wrong},
 publisher = {Hamra Books},
 year = {2010},
 ALTALTauthor = {Moustachioed Man},
 ALTALTeditor = {},
 OPTkey = {Scandal},
 OPTabstracts = {I really should have known better.},

Now, when I use the quick build function on Kile, I get a PDF where the relevant part looks like the picture attached.

[localghost]

[…] If I've understood things correctly, what I am meant to be doing is starting a "thebibliography" section and putting in entries as follows:

Code: Select all

@Book{,
 title = {What Went Wrong},
 publisher = {Hamra Books},
 year = {2010},
 ALTALTauthor = {Moustachioed Man},
 ALTALTeditor = {},
 OPTkey = {Scandal},
 OPTabstracts = {I really should have known better.},

[…]

No, you didn't understand correctly. What you present is an entry for a BibTeX database file (*.bib). And this entry is not correct. It should at least read like shown below.

Code: Select all

@Book{moustach:2010,
 title = {What Went Wrong},
 publisher = {Hamra Books},
 year = {2010},
 author = {Moustachioed Man},
 editor = {}
}

The rest of the field types depends on which bibliography style and which corresponding package you use. The most simple example would look like this.

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents*}{references.bib}
@Book{moustach:2010,
  title = {What Went Wrong},
  publisher = {Hamra Books},
  year = {2010},
  author = {Moustachioed Man},
  editor = {}
} 
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\bibliographystyle{unsrt}

\begin{document}
  Unfortunately the explanation is not found \cite{moustach:2010}.

  \bibliography{references}
\end{document}

For details about producing a bibliography with BibTeX take a look at its manual. Another more comfortable way of setting up a bibliography would be to use the biblatex package.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten

[shouldknowbetter]

Hello again and thanks for the tips,

Just a couple of things:

You've included:

Code: Select all

\begin{document}
  Unfortunately the explanation is not found \cite{moustach:2010}.

I would like to avoid using citations. Maybe I forgot to mention this, but I am trying to produce only a bibliography with no article attached to it. Will this be possible? I notice that bibtex does not work if, as I am helpfully informed through the shell:

I found no \citation commands---while reading file biblio.aux

I tried using an arbitrary "nocite" invocation somewhere, but that didn't work.
Thanks again ... any pointers greatly appreciated. I

[localghost]

[…] I would like to avoid using citations. Maybe I forgot to mention this, but I am trying to produce only a bibliography with no article attached to it. […]

Then just write a bibliography by hand with the thebibliography environment.

Code: Select all

\begin{thebibliography}{99}
  \bibitem{moustach2010} Moustachioed Man. \emph{What went wrong}. Hamre Books, 2010
\end{thebibliogrpahy}

This will show up whether you have citations in your document or not.

[…] I tried using an arbitrary "nocite" invocation somewhere, but that didn't work. […]

A \nocite{*} command at an arbitrary place in the document body should do when producing a bibliography with BibTeX.

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents*}{references.bib}
@Book{moustach:2010,
  title = {What Went Wrong},
  publisher = {Hamra Books},
  year = {2010},
  author = {Moustachioed Man},
  editor = {}
} 
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\bibliographystyle{unsrt}

\begin{document}
  \nocite{*}

  \bibliography{references}
\end{document}