Re: [Ebib-users] Ebib loses an entry

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Aloha Joost,

Thanks for your help.  Much appreciated.

All the best,
Tom

Joost Kremers <joo...@fa...> writes:

> 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

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