[OS X TeX] bibtex8

[Simon Spiegel]

On 16.12.2008, at 21:21, Juergen Fenn wrote:

>
>
> G.H. Szylowsky PhD schrieb:
>> I noticed that biblatex recommends that we use bibtex8.
>>
>> Do we get this automatically with TL?
>
> Yes. Try it in your terminal.
>
>> When I bibtex in TeXShop, do I use bibtex8?
>
> AFAICS, you can only switch between bibtex and jbibtex in the TeX Shop
> options at "misc." options (German version)? No way to call bibtex8 in
> TeX Shop?

You can create a new engine for TeXShop.

Take the following snippet and paste it into a text editor (you can  
change bibtex8's parameters, of course):

#!/bin/bash
export PATH="$PATH:/usr/texbin:/usr/local/bin"
bibtex8 -W -c 88591lat.csf --mentstrs 50000 "$(basename -s .tex $1).aux"

Save this as bibtex8.engine and set the execution bit, then move the  
file to ~/Library/TeXShop/Enginess.

 From now on you have bibtex8 in TeXShop.

simon

>
>> Does bibtex8 overcome the limitations of bibtex?
>
> See http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/entries/bibtex8bit.html
>
> | Enhanced by conversion to "big" (32-bit) capacity, addition of
> | run-time selectable capacity and 8-bit support extensions. National
> | character set and sorting order are controlled by an external
> | configuration file.
>
> Bibtex8 already was recommended for using jurabib and for large bib
> files in general, although I never needed it. IIRC you could even use
> German umlauts with MiKTeX's version of bibtex.

Unfortunately, bibtex8 only overcomes some limitations; it's still  
limited in severe ways.

simon
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