problem with moderncv and \bf inside bibliography

Question

I've this problem using moderncv. I'm using multibib and the first bibliography entry is:

@article{Aad:2011tw,
  author         = "Aad, Georges and others",
  title          = "{Measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon cross-section in pp collisions at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV using 35 pb-1 of ATLAS data}",
  collaboration  = "ATLAS Collaboration",
  journal        = "Phys.Lett.",
  volume         = "B706",
  pages          = "150-167",
  doi            = "10.1016/j.physletb.2011.11.010",
  year           = "2011",
  eprint         = "1108.0253",
  archivePrefix  = "arXiv",
  primaryClass   = "hep-ex",
  reportNumber   = "CERN-PH-EP-2011-115",
  SLACcitation   = "%%CITATION = ARXIV:1108.0253;%%",
}

and it is translated by bibtex to:

\bibitem{Aad:2011tw}
{ATLAS Collaboration} Collaboration, G.~Aad et al., {\em {Measurement of the
  inclusive isolated prompt photon cross-section in pp collisions at sqrt(s)= 7
  TeV using 35 pb-1 of ATLAS data}\/},
  \href{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2011.11.010}{Phys.Lett. {\bf B706}
  (2011)  150--167},
\href{http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.0253}{{\tt arXiv:1108.0253 [hep-ex]}}.
%%CITATION = ARXIV:1108.0253;%%.

When I run pdflatex I get:

[4]) (./pub.bbl
! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \Hy@safe@activesfalse Phys.Lett. {\bf 
                                                 B706} (2011) 150--167
l.8   (2011)  150--167}
                       ,

what's the problem? I used the same .bib file without moderncv and I haven't such problems.

My preample looks like this:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,sans]{moderncv}

\moderncvstyle{classic}
\moderncvcolor{blue}

\renewcommand*\bibliographyitemlabel{\arabic{enumiv}.}

\usepackage[left=2cm,right=2cm,top=1.8cm,bottom=2.2cm]{geometry}
\setlength{\hintscolumnwidth}{2.5cm}

\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{multibib}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\newcites{conf}{Conferences and talks}
\newcites{pub}{Publications}
\newcites{confnote}{Selected conference and public notes}
\newcites{intnote}{Selected internal notes}
\newcites{poster}{Posters}
\newcites{proceedings}{Proceedings}

What does the rest of your preamble look like? \bf was deprecated with LaTeX2e, but it should still be usable. — AstroPig7, Aug 13 '12 at 21:18

Ian Thompson · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-13T21:47:52.893

Support for the old commands \bf, \rm, etc. is generally provided by the document class. For example, lines 579-587 of report.cls contain the following

\DeclareOldFontCommand{\rm}{\normalfont\rmfamily}{\mathrm}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\sf}{\normalfont\sffamily}{\mathsf}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\tt}{\normalfont\ttfamily}{\mathtt}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\bf}{\normalfont\bfseries}{\mathbf}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\it}{\normalfont\itshape}{\mathit}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\sl}{\normalfont\slshape}{\@nomath\sl}
\DeclareOldFontCommand{\sc}{\normalfont\scshape}{\@nomath\sc}
\DeclareRobustCommand*\cal{\@fontswitch\relax\mathcal}
\DeclareRobustCommand*\mit{\@fontswitch\relax\mathnormal}

This is missing from moderncv.cls. Try adding the above to the preamble of your document. In this particular case you could just add the lines concerning \bf, \em and \tt, but it's probably worth adding them all, just to be sure the problem won't occur again.

thank you, I've modified the bst with \tt->\texttt and \bf -> \textbt, now it works — wiso, Aug 13 '12 at 21:39
Be careful! \texttt and the like apply to the next object only, whereas the old commands apply until the end of the current group. So, in your example, only the 'B' in 'B706' will be in bold if you simply change \bf to \textbf. — Ian Thompson, Aug 13 '12 at 21:45

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 13 '12 at 21:24

2

\bf is apparently not defined in some modern implementations of LaTeX. I reproduced this issue with XeLaTeX and the following MWE:

\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
Test \bf test
\end{document}

I was using XeLaTeX 0.9998 and MiKTeX 2.9. moderncv was last updated in 2007, so this is likely just the march of time leaving behind an unmaintained package.

answered Aug 13 '12 at 21:24

AstroPig7

423

Ah, I based my comment on the date given in the README. Regardless, \bf does not work in my copy of XeLaTeX, and I see Ian Thompson has explained why. – AstroPig7 Aug 13 '12 at 21:35

problem with moderncv and \bf inside bibliography

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