6

I have heavily modified an existing .bst file (apalike2) to get the format working perfectly. However, an editor I'm working with tells me that the first time a multi-author citation is used, I need to give all of the authors in the citation.

I thought "no problem, I'll just add longnamesfirst". I tried that, and it didn't work, and further research leads me to find out that a .bst file needs specific support for that feature to work, and apalike doesn't have that support.

I have used LaTeX for a long time, but am not an expert. The way that packages work internally have always been a mystery to me. I've managed to hack at the apalike2 .bst to get it to work how I want, but I can't find the hook to support longnamesfirst, or even the *-version of the \cite commands. If anyone can give me even a nudge in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

Mario S. E.
  • 18,609
user38269
  • 61
  • 1
  • Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. Usually, we don't put a greeting or a “thank you” in our posts. While this might seem strange at first, it is not a sign of lack of politeness, but rather part of our trying to keep everything very concise. Accepting and upvoting answers is the preferred way here to say “thank you” to users who helped you. – Mario S. E. Oct 14 '13 at 15:41
  • Mico - there are no errors or warnings when I use longnamesfirst. It is part of natbib docs that state that cite* commands perform the same as the normal cite commands if long names are not supported in the BST file, so there's no reason for a warning - that's just part of what it does.

    I've also tried using citestyle (\citestyle{plainnat}), but that doesn't seem to work either, though I could be using it wrong.

     – user38269 Oct 14 '13 at 15:51

1 Answers1

1

You mention using a heavily modified version of the style file apalike2. It's not clear from your description whether the style file's incompatibility with natbib's longnamesfirst option was present even before the modifications to apalike2 were applied of if it's maybe caused by the modifications. (My guess is that it's the former, but we can't be entirely certain.)

The only suggestion that comes readily to my mind is to create a bibliography style file from scratch using the makebst utility, which is part of the custom-bib package. The makebst utility -- started by typing 

latex makebst

at a command prompt -- uses a multiple query/multiple choice format to find out all formatting requirements and then creates a new style file for you. A big plus is that because the utility was written by the author of the natbib package, using it alongside natbib (and, if needed, its longnamesfirst option) is seemless.

Mico
  • 506,678