[OS X TeX] OT: natbib/custom-bib help needed.

[Wendy McKay]

Folks

On the off chance that there some natbib/custom-bib  experts on this list 
who can provide some guidance, I am posting this here with apologies in 
advance if it is too off-topic.

I have a problem with a .bst file I created with makebst.
bibtex is generating years with a suffix even when the label/key is unique.
I may have made a bad choice in one of the options.  I've tried other
variations tinkering with the .dbj file  but get  similar results.
The list of References is created with:
 	\usepackage[square, authoryear]{natbib}

This is my first attempt with makebst and I don't really know 
what option to choose to get repeated labels based on the label/key
and not on first author's last name.

Can you spot the mistake? Any suggestions on what to change?
-- wendy

////////////////////////// README //////////////////////////////////
The problem is described in
 	http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/custombib/BaoTest/runbao.pdf
bibdata:
 	  http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/custombib/BaoTest/bao.bib

The test files are posted here
 	http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/custombib/BaoTest/

bao.bib         runbao.aux      runbao.blg      runbao.pdf
jem.bst         runbao.bbl      runbao.log      runbao.tex

 	http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/custombib/BaoTest.tar.gz
contains the tarball of all the files.

The file jem.bst was generated with makebst.tex as a custom-bib.
 	http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/custombib/customize/
contains the .log and .dbj file that created the .bst
 	jem.dbj		makebst.log		jem.bst

The runbao.bbl output is as expected,  except when the same author 
appears as first author. Bibtex (when run with jem.bst on bao.bib) is 
adding \natexlab{a}, \natexlab{b}, \natexlab{c} in the runbao.bbl file
because the first author, (Bao), is repeated in each of the four records,
even though the coauthors are different and the label/key provided for 
each record is unique.

E.g.,
\citet*{Bao1984}
\citet*{BaChIsYa1985}
\citet*{BaIsYa1985}
\citet*{BaMaWa1985}

gives

Bao [1984]
Bao, Choquet-Bruhat, Isenberg, and Yasskin [1985a]
Bao, Isenberg, and Yasskin [1985b] 
Bao, Marsden, and Walton [1985c]

but it should be:

Bao [1984]
Bao, Choquet-Bruhat, Isenberg, and Yasskin [1985]
Bao, Isenberg, and Yasskin [1985]
Bao, Marsden, and Walton [1985]

without the a, b, c

Q: What option needs to be chosen for the list to be sorted by label/key
and not by first author.
Can the jem.dbj  file be fixed to give a jem.bst that we want,
or is sorting by first author a fixed feature of natbib.

If you can help solve this mystery, please contact wendy:
wgm at cds.caltech.edu
May 1, 2006

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