                              CUSTOM-BIB Package

**** INFO ******
(Work on version 4.x has been supported by the American Physical Society)

Current version is 4.05
*****************
Changes over 4.04: fix page suppression bug in all language files
                   fix bug in inproceedings with pp-last option

Changes over 4.03: addition of slovene.mbs for Slovenian language.
                   additional journal in geojour.mbs

*****************

This is the custom-bib package for generating customized BibTeX bibliography
styles from a generic file by means of the docstrip program that is part of
the LaTeX2e installation.

****************************************************************************

To use/install the package:

0. (optional, for hackers) LaTeX makebst.dtx to get the documentation;
     This also extracts makebst.ins from makebst.dtx, if it does not already
     exist.
1. Run TeX (or LaTeX) on makebst.ins (--> makebst.tex)
2. Run TeX (or LaTeX) on makebst.tex to start customizing
     your own .bst file. Select merlin as the master file (default) when
     asked. (I have other master files for my own purposes.)
3. Answer the questions that then arise; for merlin, you will also be asked
     which language support file you want (default is merlin itself, meaning
     English or the pseudo-language Babel). You will also be asked if you want
     to add a file defining short-hand designations for various journals; such
     files are included (physjour.mbs, geojour.mbs, photjour.mbs) for physics
     geophysics, and optics journals, but you could create your own.
4. The menus that appear may not be informative enough for you. More
     information can be obtained by reading the documentation (on the options)
     contained in the .mbs files themselves. This documentation can be printed
     out by running LaTeX on the .mbs files.
5. The makebst program only produces a docstrip batch job to generate the .bst
     file. The last question it asks is whether that job should be run right
     away. You can always run it again yourself by running TeX or LaTeX on
     this .dbj file. (The .dbj file can also be manually edited if you want to
     play around with the various options it includes.)

****************************************************************************

The package contains the following files:
  merlin.mbs   --  A master BibTeX style file for producing customized
                   styles (numerical or author-year) with docstrip. It is
                   self-documenting: simply latex it to produce its
                   description.

  english.mbs  --  A sample language support file for English, to act as a
                   model for hacking others.

  catalan.mbs  --  A language support file for Catalan
  dansk.mbs    --  A language support file for Danish
  dutch.mbs    --  A language support file for Dutch
  esperant.mbs --  A language support file for Esperanto
  finnish.mbs  --  A language support file for Finnish
  french.mbs   --  A language support file for French
  german.mbs   --  A language support file for German
  italian.mbs  --  A language support file for Italian
  norsk.mbs    --  A language support file for Norwegian
  polski.mbs   --  A language support file for Polish
  portuges.mbs --  A language support file for Portuguese
  slovene.mbs  --  A language support file for Slovene
  spanish.mbs  --  A language support file for Spanish
(Further contributions and corrections are welcome)

  physjour.mbs --  A support file to add the names of common Physics journals
                   in shorthand form, for example `pr' for Physical Review, or
                   Phys. Rev., depending on whether abbreviations are chosen.

  photjour.mbs --  A contributed file containing names of optics journals

  geojour.mbs  --  A contributed file containing names of geophysics journals
  suppjour.mbs --  A contributed file containing further journal names

(Contributions for other fields are welcome)

  shorthnd.ins --  (La)TeX this file to obtain shorthnd.tex, which when
                   LaTeX'ed lists all the shorthands and journal names

The .mbs files can only be used effectively with the makebst `program', which
is included in documented source form.

  makebst.dtx  --  the documented source file; LaTeXing this file produces
                   the manual and optionally a documentation of the coding.
                   Requires ltxdoc class from the LaTeX2e distribution.

                   This is version 4.0; necessary with merlin 4.00, but
                   works with older versions of merlin.

  makebst.ins  --  a docstrip batch job to extract from makebst.dtx the
                   program file makebst.tex. (This file is actually included
                   within makebst.dtx; it is extracted when the .dtx file is
                   processed under LaTeX2e.)

****************************************************************************

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT:-
Many authors are frustrated at the wide range of bibliographic styles demanded
by journals and publishers, and at the limited number available with standard
LaTeX and BibTeX. This is not the fault of the latter, but rather of the lack
of any bibliographic standards in the English language. Often the differences
are so trivial (comma or colon, date in brackets or parentheses). The normal
user does not want to tackle the task of making up his own .bst file (no
normal human would!)

For this reason, I set out to produce a generic .bst file that could have
features and options selected by means of the docstrip program.
I found over 50 different *.bst files and compared their outputs just for
article: they were all different. They served as part of my input as to which
features were needed. I knew of a few extra that were not covered by these 50.

I also discovered XBTXBST.DOC, a minor modification of Patashnik's BTXBST.DOC,
as well as a file PHYSICS.BST, all of which are meant to do precisely what I
had set up to accomplish. However, they make use of the C Preprocessor
language. It is really a simple matter to convert the preprocessor commands
into docstrip equivalents.

Nevertheless, none of these really met all of my needs, so I continued to
develop GENBST.mbs (GENeric-BibST.MasterBibSt). It soon became obvious that the
sheer number of options necessary made any kind of customizing a difficult
chore. Hence, the next step: the program MAKEBST takes menu information from
the selected .mbs file and presents the user with descriptive choices as
menus. From the answers, it writes a docstrip batch job (extension .dbj) which
when TeX'ed, creates the desired .bst file out of the .mbs one. The .dbj file
may even be hand edited if one wants to alter only one or two options.

Since I first released this system in November 1993, I have received many
suggestions and requests for additions. I have tried to incorporate as many as
possible, but often the task is too complicated and I have to leave them out.

The second version of GENBST.mbs allowed other languages to be used. However,
since the method had considerable overhead per language, I was unsatified with
it. A parallel version called BABEL.mbs (which was really GENBST.mbs version
2) has been available for some time, supporting English, French, German, and
Esperanto, as well as a generic language called Babel.

I then modified MAKEBST to allow more than one .mbs file to be used as
input for any given .bst output. This means that the language support can be
contained in separate files, one per language, and does not need to burden the
main file. The next issue of this main file, version 3, was renamed
MERLIN.mbs, to emphasize its magical powers.

Version 3 continued to grow as more suggestions and requests were
contributed. Further language files were offered to me, as well as lists of
prerecorded journal names. The number of options had grown to roughly 200,
including the defaults.

The American Physical Society then decided it would like a number of new
features for its REVTeX package, mainly to support electronic publishing.
David Carlisle, Mark Doyle, and Arthur Ogawa made up a variant on merlin.mbs
for this purpose, which I then integrated into the "official" one. Thus was
born version 4.00 of MERLIN.mbs.

NOTE ON AUTHOR-YEAR CITATIONS:-
Author-year style citations are not supported by standard LaTeX and BibTeX.
However, there exist a large number of bib styles for this, all of which need
some interface package to run properly. There are (at least) 7 different such
interfaces, including the one I invented for the NATBIB package. If one
selects author-year style, then one is asked which interface is to be
used. (Incidentally NATBIB is capable of interpreting all of them.)

LIST OF ALL OPTIONS IN THE DBJ FILE
The makebst program writes to the .dbj file all the docstrip options that were
offered in the interactive session with the unselected ones commented out.
This makes editing afterwards much easier. Often one wants to experiment with
some of these options, but only wants to run the makebst program once.

This feature (suggested by Frank Mittelbach) is available when the
makebst.tex file is extracted from makebst.dtx with the `optlist' option;
without it, only the selected options are listed in the .dbj file.
Edit the makebst.ins file accordingly; by default, this feature is included.

With version 4, one may select a verbose listing during run time, writing
more details into the .dbj file, including all possible options, even those
not offered.

ALLOW MULTIPLE INPUT .MBS FILES
The .dbj file is so constructed that more than one input .mbs file may be
read for a single output .bst file. The main .mbs file must have its menu
coding arranged to take advantage of this, something that merlin.mbs does.
(The older genbst.mbs and babel.mbs did not have this feature.)

NEW FEATURES OF MERLIN.MBS since genbst.mbs 1.7 and babel 2.5
Names formatting:  can also have reversed full names, as Smith, John George
                   (previously reversed names could only be initials)
   John George Smith
   Smith, John George  (v3.1)
   J. G. Smith
   Smith, J. G.
   (AGU style: first name reversed, rest normal, all with initials)
   (AGU style but with full names, not initials)  (v3.82)
   Smith, J G
   Smith, JG   (v3.1)
   Smith J G   (v3.2)

Editors' names (in collections) for surname-first styles, may now be formatted
   exactly as the authors'. (Previously these would never be reversed.)

   Also possible to have
                In: B. G. Jones, editor, Booktitle  [default]
                In: B. G. Jones, (editor), Booktitle
                In: B. G. Jones, (editor) Booktitle
                In: B. G. Jones (editor) Booktitle
                In: Booktitle, edited by B. G. Jones
                In: Booktitle (edited by B. G. Jones)
                In: Booktitle, (edited by B. G. Jones)
                In: Booktitle, editor B. G. Jones
                In: Booktitle, (editor) B. G. Jones
                In: Booktitle (editor B. G. Jones)
                In: Booktitle, (editor B. G. Jones)
                In: Booktitle, B. G. Jones, editor
                In: Booktitle (B. G. Jones, editor)

ISBN and ISSN numbers can optionally be included, if present in database

Volume, number has more possibilities: for volume=34, number=2:
  34(2)   34 (2)   34, 2   34, no. 2    34, #2    34   34(1997)
(Last example: the year in parentheses in place of the number)

The following page number can be separated by colon, colon space,
   semi-colon and space, comma and space, or space only

Or even   vol. 34 (1994) 2, pp. 234-254  (v3.81)

Date: year coming just after authors may have colon and space following
      date may appear as `1994 Jul', with or without a dot (v3.2)
      date may be part of journal specification, something that is common
        in medical journals (v3.2)

Journal names: the periods in abbreviations may be removed, so Phys. Rev.
   becomes Phys Rev  (no change to database necessary)

Author names in citations and list of references may be independently set
  in italic, small caps, or bold. Optionally, first names can be in a
  different font from the surnames.

The mininum number of authors' names before et al. has been raised from
  6 to 99 (v3.87)

The page numbers in edited works can have `pages' or `pp' suppressed (v3.2)

It is possible to have the names sorted by ignoring the `von' part, so that
  della Robbia comes after Rabin (v3.2)

Publisher's address may come before name, as New York: New Press
  (required by some psychology journals) (v3.3)

Publisher's address may come before the chapter/page information (v3.81)

Number/series can come just before publisher/organization (v3.88)

URL support for online documents (v3.97)

HTML output added, experimental (v3.88)

Refinements added to version 3.3:
  - the extra labels added to years (as 1995a) are grouped in braces
    to avoid some problems with natbib when this extra label is more than
    one letter

  - when full author lists may be optional (for harvard and natbib formats)
    they are no longer included if they are identical to the short
    author list

Refinements added to version 3.4:
  - journals can have date between volume and pages, as
       J. Geophys. Res. {\bf 34} (1994) 333-338
  - author block can be terminated with colon
  - if cited authors are in bold, italic, or small caps, then the word
      `and' can be in the regular text font, not in the author font.

Refinements added to version 3.5:
  - Technical Reports can have titles treated like books (default=article)
  - can sort by year then authors
  - can include more than one file with prestored journal names
  - bug fixed for limited number of authors: sort only on those present
  - the `named' format for \bibitem now included.

Refinements added to version 3.6:
  - blocks can be separated by colons as well as commas or periods
  - name of journal can be in normal font, not only italic
  - pages in books may be in parentheses
  - can have `number' as part of page specification:  34, (2)234-(2)254
  - date may be bold
  - if authors in list have special font, then `and' and/or `et al.'
    may be normal font

Refinements added to version 3.7:
  - an option to allow authors to be separated by semi-colons instead of
    by commas
  - fix bug in the option that removes periods from journal names when
    italicized

Refinements added to version 3.8:
  - fix a bug with titles in quotes
  - an option allows ALPHA style citations, of the form  ABD90. This
    is essentially a numerical system with some text replacing the number.
  - publishers and address can appear in parentheses
  - punctuation between `blocks' can be suppressed, space only
  - ordering reference list by year is possible for author-year as well as
     numerical modes
  - can put date between volume and number
  - can add `pages' or `pp' to articles
  - cited names in a special font can have the `and' in regular font:
    previously this meant \rm, but now, with NFSS, only the one attribute is
    reset; thus  \textbf{\cite{james93}} yields
       \textbf{\textsc{James {\upshape and} Johns}, [1993]}
    so that `and' will be bold non-sc. (Actually, bold small caps does not
    exist in the CM fonts, so a substitution will be made.)

Refinements added to version 3.81:
  - when used with natbib 6.3, the extra letters added to the dates in
    author-year citations (Jones et al, 1994a) are suppressed in the reference
    list when numerical citations are used instead. These letters are
    superfluous in this case and so should not be present.
  - For incollections, the word `in' can be left off.
  - Publisher can be placed before chapter/page information
  - dates can be followed by periods even when block punctuation is comma

  - The .mbs files with prestored journal names have been rationalized, to
    remove duplications (or shorthands) and to organize the journal types
    better. Some journals were present several times under different
    shorthands (Phys. Rev. is both pr and physrev); these multiple shorthands
    have been retained for consistency. Duplications of journal AND shorthand
    have been removed. One shorthand clash: jas was both Journal of Applied
    Spectroscopy and Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences; the former has been
    altered to jasp.
  - A file shorthnd.ins is included to assist listing the journal shorthands

  - Option yr-com to allow comma before the date.
  - Option pub-date to put publisher and date in parentheses (Nature style)
  - Some internal improvements

Refinements added to version 3.82:
  - Page numbers can come at end before notes
  - Fix up bug with quoted titles when title missing
  - Fix up bug that left off extra date labels for plain dates with no brackets
       or special punctuation
  - Fix up bug that put punctuation before publishers in paretheses
  - Add option to allow full names, with only first author reversed

Refinements added to version 3.83:
  - Edited works can be either     Names (eds.), Booktitle
                          or       Names, (eds.) Booktitle
    Previously only the first version was possible. (There are several other
      possibilities too.)
  - If commas selected as punctuation between blocks, one can still have a
      period coming before any file note.
  - With repeated authors/editors for adjacent references, the repeated names
      can be replaced by a long dash.
  - \BIBand made robust, otherwise it does not really work.

Refinements added to version 3.84:
  - large page numbers can be separated by comma, space, period,
     as  10,345. No provision for 7 digit numbers
  - emphasis can also be underlining; bad policy, since underlining belongs
     to the days of the typewriter, and in LaTeX, \underline command cannot
     be broken across lines. Loading the ulem package by Donald Arseneau
     solves this problem.
  - titles can be in <<guillemots>> (best with T1 encoding, but poor man's
     OT1 also provided; must have LaTeX2e)
  - titles of proceedings and collections can be in quotes if article
     titles in quotes
  - can add year to journal volume in parentheses as vol(year) and still
     format year for books differently.
  - full natbib form of \bibitem resistent against square brackets in names
     or date.

Refinements added to version 3.85:
  - add option to allow junior part of name of appear in citations
  - options for specifying fonts for names: may apply only to the surnames
      if wished, and not to the entire name. User-defined font commands
      \bibnamefont,  \bibfnamefont, and \citenamefont  may be used too,
      where the names are used as a single argument.

Refinements added to version 3.86:
  - suppress ISBN number for certain crossrefs
  - fix bug with limited number of authors when mininum is 6
  - add option for comma between year and pages
  - restrict \natexlab to natbib styles

Refinements added to version 3.87:
  - Limited number of authors can be as many as 99 (previously 6)
  - Add language field, to switch hyphenation patterns for titles
  - Add url field for all entries
  - Add annote field
  - Months may be suppressed for numerical mode
  - et~al. is no longer hardwired; dutch.mbs allows variations on et~al.

Refinements added to version 3.88:
  - Copyright notices conform to LaTeX Project Public Licence
  - HTML coding can replace the LaTeX pre- and postamble and font commands;
    intended for Web listings of complete databases; LaTeX special symbol
    remain; works only if one selects numerical, not author-year citations.
  - complex coding to convert edition numbers to (multilingual) text and vice
    versa can be removed, saving considerable memory requirements and
    possibly preventing memory overflow
  - by default, number and series for inproceedings and incollection can only
    be used as "Complete Works" (series only) or "Number 3 in Complete Works"
    (number and series). With number only, a warning is issued. New option
    allows number to be a document code number, like REP-01/1998-ab; without
    series, this number is printed bare, without the word "Number", but if
    both number and series are present, the default text "Number .. in .." is
    reinstated.
  - another option allows the number/series to be prepended to the publisher
    and/or organization name.
  - more options to format editors in inproceedings and incollection
  - option to allow the total number of pages in books to be listed; for
    this, the pages field must be given for the entry, a field that is
    normally ignored for books.
  - book titles may be set in upright typeface (default is italic)
  - a slash may be used in place of comma or semi-colon between authors
  - journal names may be preceded by `in' as for incollections

Refinements added to version 3.89:
  -  for use with natbib 7.0:
       when author/editor empty, the key field is used in place of author,
         but what is new is the option that the year is then left blank
         in the \bibitem entry. This allows natbib (7.0) to print only the
         key without any year punctuation.
       also optional, if the year itself is missing, it is left blank instead
         of being set to ????.
  -  fix a bug that caused the citation font to be missing at times

Refinements added to version 4.00:
  -  Entire code reorganized and rationalized (by Arthur Ogawa).
  -  For REVTeX, new fields collaboration, eid, eprint, archive, numpages
  -  Option for tagging all entries in the bibliography with \bibinfo marker.
       Thus the pages might appear as \bibinfo{pages}{345--350} which prints
       only the page numbers, but allows other programs to parse the entries.
      (Contribution by David Carlisle.)
  -  For reversed author names, the junior part can appear either as
         Smith, Jr., John  (previously the only possibility) or
         Smith, John, Jr.
      (For some reason, the AGU options that reverse only the leading name in
       an author list always used this latter form.)
  -  When surnames and first names are in different fonts, the junior part is
       now in the same font as the first name. Previously, it varied.
  -  When abbreviated months or journal names are to be dotless, only the
       dots are removed. Previously all non-alphanumeric characters were
       removed, causing problems with accents in other languages.
  -  When author initials are to be dotless, the dot is also removed from
       the junior part.
  -  Journal abbreviations in physjour.mbs may be those used in astronomy
       journals, e.g. ApJ for Astrophysical Journal, (aka Astrophys. J.)

Refinements added to version 4.01
  - a bug with the bibinfo tag caused titles not be be case-changed; fixed
  - technical report numbers were not tagged with bibinfo; fixed
  - option added to let the word `in' be in italics.

Refinements added to version 4.02
  - some bugs fixed:
    In:  with articles no longer has comma added
    bold dates work when date and publisher together
    typo  alfph removed

Refinements added to version 4.03
  - bug fixes
  - add definition of \natexlab to aux file for harvard styles
  - add option thtit-x to suppress thesis titles
  - add option seq-yrr to order by descending years (latest first)
  - Updates to french.mbs, dansk.mbs
  - Fix misprint in physjour.mbs


Refinements added to version 4.04:
  - addition of slovene.mbs for Slovenian language.
  - additional journal in geojour.mbs

Refinement added to version 4.05:
  - fix all language files for a bug in suppression of page numbers
  - fix bug in merlin.mbs in inproceedings with pp-last plus dt-beg|dt-end

2002 Oct 21
Patrick W. Daly
Max-Planck-Institut f\"ur Aeronomie
D-37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
E-mail: daly@linmpi.mpg.de
