Re: [Ebib-users] Ebib loses an entry

[Joost K. <joo...@fa...>]

Hi Tom,

> I ran into a problem with ebib having to do with entering an author
> whose surname begins with a special LaTeX character.  The author's name
> is Mehmet \"{O}zdo\u{g}an, and my setup generates this key for the
> entry: \oxdogan06:_hypot_approac_realit.

Actually, BibTeX keys are not supposed to have a backslash in them, so that
key is invalid. If you try using it in a LaTeX document, it'll fail with an
"Undefined control sequence" error and I suspect BibTeX won't accept it
either.

Since Ebib uses bibtex.el to autogenerate keys, this is actually a bug in
bibtex.el: this key shouldn't have been generated. I'll report this bug to
the maintainer of bibtex.el so it can be fixed.

Note, however, that when you use (La)TeX commands such as \" or \u in
BibTeX fields, you should actually put them in between braces. So rather
than:

author = {Mehmet \"{O}zdo\u{g}an}

you should write:

author = {Mehmet {\"O}zdo{\u g}an}

or 

author = {Mehmet {\"{O}}zdo{\u{g}}an}

I don't remember the details of why this is the case, but it's explained in
the BibTeX doc. (A `texdoc bibtex` should bring that up.)

If you enter the name in this way, bibtex.el will create a valid key
(though it'll replace the \"O with 'oe', which AFAIK is not a Turkish
convertion) which is probably why this bug has gone unnoticed up til now.

The problem you're experiencing in Ebib is probably due to the fact that \o
is interpreted as some control sequence. Theoretically, this would be
fixable, I guess, but since slashes shouldn't appear in BibTeX keys anyway,
I'm not sure if that would be the right approach. Though it would probably
be a good thing if Ebib warned about such things so the user can fix them.

> P.S. Thanks again for ebib.  I rely on it heavily in my work now and
> find it a joy to use.

Thanks, that's very nice to hear. :-) 

Best,

Joost


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments