[OS X TeX] typesetting problem

Sun Jun 1 15:10:07 EDT 2025

I’m experienciing a sudden change in behavior in a writing project I have been working on, which prevents me from creating the final pdf file, and which I totally don’t understand (since the various parts have been working fine together for some time, until today).

Ther is a “master file” called SF6.tex which starts

% !TEX TS-program = latex
\documentclass{article}

followed by (many) \usepackage and \newcommand lines,
and ends with

\begin{document}

\title{The Space-Filling Curves of Peano and Hilbert:\\Digital Presentations,\\ Multigrids, and Gray Codes}

\author{Zbigniew Nitecki\\
               Tufts University\\
                zbigniew.nitecki at tufts.edu}

\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\input{SFC6-Intro}
%\input{SFC6-Cantor}
\input{SFC6-Peano}
\input{SFC6-Hilbert}
\input{SFC6-PeanoHilbert}
\input{SFC6-HilbertEx}
%\input{SFC5-HilbertExNew}

\bibliography{Peano}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
%

\end{document}

The individual files are all in the same folder as the master file.
Each begins with

% !TEX root =  SFC6.tex

The file Peano.bib is in my texmf file.

This setup has been working fine for a matter of many months at least, until today.
I was making some corrections/rewrites etc. using TeXShop and checking periodically for deadly tex typos by typesetting and making corrections
as demanded by the console.  Generally, “go to error” gets me to the mundane typos like missing braces, or brackets instead of braces and so on.  Once in a while, “go to error” sends me to the master file, usually to the “begin document” line, and I have usually been able to work out what the problem was via some sort of ad hoc inverse engineering process.
In such a case, I would generally abort and trash aux files and start over with the typesetting process.
But suddenly, I am getting errors in the Peano.bib file, specifically in the opening lines which are a set of abbreviations for journal titles.  Nothing seems to make them go away:  I thought I had caught some missing braces in that list, but now the combination of
abort and trash aux files seems to do nothing.
One suspicious observation is that when I look at the folder containing the various .tex and .aux (etc.) files, I am seeing multiple
versions of SF6.pdf, SF6.aux, SF6.bbl and so on.  I tried just dragging them into trash, but it doesn’t seem to help.
I’m also noticing that the errors that the console shows (which now seem to concern the bibliography) at places change upper case
text in the Peano.bib file to lower case—I don’t know why, and how that might be affecting stuff.

Here are the full list of abbreviations at the start of Peano.bib

@string{Acta ={Acta Mathematica}}
@string{AdvM ={Advances in Mathematics}}
@string{AmJMath ={American Journal of Mathematics}}
@string{AMMonth ={American Mathematical Monthly}}
@string{AnnMatPA ={Annali die Matematica Pura ed Applicata}}
@string{ArchfMP ={Archiv f{\"u}r Mathematik und Physik}}
@string{ArcHExSci ={Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences}}
 @string{BSTJ ={Bell System Technical Journal}}
@string{BSM ={Bulletin des sciences math{\'e}matiques}}
@string{CRAS ={Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des s{\'e}ances de l'Acad{\'e}mie des Sciences, Paris}}
@string{EdM ={Elemente der Mathematik}}
@string{HistMath ={Historia Mathematica}}
@string{JDMV ={Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung}}
@string{JMpa ={Journal de Math{\'e}matiques Pures et Appliqu{\'e}es}}
@string{JraM ={Journal f{\"u}r die reine und angewandte Mathematik}}
@string{MathAnn ={Mathematische Annalen}}
@string{MathGaz ={The Mathematical Gazette}}
@string{MathMag ={Mathematics Magazine}}
@string{RendPalermo={Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo}}
@string{SiamRev= ={SIAM Review}}
@string{SciAm= ={Scientific American}}
@string{SPE ={Software: Practice and Experience}}
@string{TAMS ={Transactions of the American Mathematical Society}}

@article{Abel-Mark:1990,
author={D. Abel and D. Mark},
title={A comparative analysis of some two-dimensional orderings},
journal={Int. J. Geograph. Inform. Syst.},
volute={4},
year={1990},
pages={21-31}
}

and her is the console file:

This is BibTeX, Version 0.99d (TeX Live 2017)
The top-level auxiliary file: SFC6.aux
The style file: plain.bst
Database file #1: Peano.bib
You're missing a field part---line 20 of file Peano.bib
 : @string{siamrev=
 :                  ={SIAM Review}}
I'm skipping whatever remains of this command
You're missing a field part---line 21 of file Peano.bib
 : @string{sciam=
 :                ={Scientific American}}
I'm skipping whatever remains of this command
You're missing a field part---line 574 of file Peano.bib
 : issue=
 :       (4),
I'm skipping whatever remains of this entry
You're missing a field name---line 597 of file Peano.bib
 :
 : {pages=449-469}
(Error may have been on previous line)
I'm skipping whatever remains of this entry
I was expecting a `,' or a `}'---line 666 of file Peano.bib
 :
 : @article{Hutchinson:1981,
(Error may have been on previous line)
I'm skipping whatever remains of this entry
I was expecting a `,' or a `}'---line 878 of file Peano.bib
 :
 : title={Gray-Codes}
(Error may have been on previous line)
I'm skipping whatever remains of this entry
I was expecting a `,' or a `}'---line 1147 of file Peano.bib
 :
 : note={This is a follow-up to \cite{Schoenflies:1900}.}
(Error may have been on previous line)
I'm skipping whatever remains of this entry
Illegal end of database file---line 1422 of file Peano.bib
 :
 :

(Note how SiamRev becomes siamrev in the first error message)

HELP!!!  :-(

Any advice about how to go about debugging would be very much appreciated.
 At the moment my mundane proofreading and rewriting has come to a full stop until I can start typesetting again.

BTW I am using TeXShop version 5.47, via Ventura 13.7.6 on a vintage 2017 MacBook Pro.

Zbigniew Nitecki
Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155

telephones:
Dept.    (617)627-3234
Dept. fax    (617)627-3966
http://www.tufts.edu/~znitecki/

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