2025 Problems - BibTeX
- Date: 21 September 2023
- Time: 6:30 to 7:30pm (UK Time)
Summary
I’m delighted that this week Nelson Beebe will be describing BibTeX, and problems he’d like to have solved by the end of 2025.
For more information about the TeX Hour, including Zoom URL, see the About page.
BibTeX is part of LaTeX. It’s described even in Lamports 1994 LaTeX book. Nelson has contributed a rigorous grammar for BibTeX and friends, and pioneered the storage and retrieval of BibTeX records in SQL databases. Crucial here is that BibTeX is flexible. Each record can include fields relevant only for search and retrieval, which won’t appear in a citation.
Nelson finds the combination of BibTeX and SQL enormously valuable for documenting publications in books and journals, and on specific subjects, and by and about specific authors. He also contributes to large shared libraries of BibTeX records.