bibweb.info

This is bibweb.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.2 from bibweb.texi.

   This is edition 0.60, November 2003, of the `Bibweb Manual'.
Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003 John H. Palmieri


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Top,  Next: Introduction,  Prev: (dir),  Up: (dir)

Bibweb
******

   Bibweb is a perl script written by John Palmieri (in consultation
with Bill Dwyer).

   This is version 0.60, November 2003, of the Bibweb manual.  Bug
reports and suggestions for new features should go to
`palmieri@math.washington.edu'.

   This is the first version of this manual; it is done (except for the
indices).

* Menu:

* Introduction::                Overview, quick instructions
* How to::                      More detailed instructions
* Installation::                How to install


How to

* LaTeX file::               What your LaTeX file should look like
* Invoking bibweb::             What bibweb does

LaTeX file

* Bibliography command::        What the \bibliography command should look like
* Citations::                   Formats for citations

Invoking bibweb

* Basic operation::             Quick instructions
* Options::                     Options for running bibweb


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Introduction,  Next: How to,  Prev: Top,  Up: Top

Introduction
************

   Bibweb is a utility for automatically retrieving bibliographical
information from the American Mathematical Society's MathSciNet search
engine (available at <http://www.ams.org/mathscinet>).  (In particular,
in order to use bibweb, you must have access to MathSciNet, which means
that you or your institution has at some point shelled out some
quantity of money to the AMS.  Anyway...)

   If you're too lazy to go to the library or use a web browser to find
out bibliographical information for that ground-breaking paper you're
writing, then bibweb is the program for you.  It is intended for use
with BibTeX (which means with LaTeX), and you have to write citations
in a particular format, but that's about all there is to it.

   Briefly: once you've installed bibweb, if you are editing a file
called `bozo.tex', then you need to insert the following line:

       \bibliography{bozo}

If you are also using the BibTeX file `junk.bib', then you should use
the following line:

       \bibliography{junk,bozo}

When you want to cite a paper whose bibliographical information you are
lacking, say "Periodic phenomena in the Adams-Novikov spectral
sequence" by H. R. Miller, D. C. Ravenel, and W. S. Wilson, then you
give LaTeX the command

       \cite{miller-ravenel-wilson-periodic}

or

       \cite{miller-ravenel-wilson-novikov}

or

       \cite{miller-ravenel-wilson}

or

       \cite{miller-ravenel;adams-spectral}

When you run this through LaTeX, it won't find the citation (by
assumption); BibTeX won't find a citation either.  When you run bibweb,
though, by typing

       bibweb bozo

at the shell prompt, then it takes your citation and queries
MathSciNet.  If it finds a match, it writes the bibliographic
information, in BibTeX format, to the file `bozo.bib'.

   Bibweb also lets you search for just a single citation, it lets you
specify the names of the input (TeX) and output (BibTeX) files
separately, and has other options.  *Note Options::, for details.


File: bibweb.info,  Node: How to,  Next: Installation,  Prev: Introduction,  Up: Top

How to
******

   In this section, we give detailed instructions for how to use bibweb.

* Menu:

* LaTeX file::               What your LaTeX file should look like
* Invoking bibweb::             What bibweb does


File: bibweb.info,  Node: LaTeX file,  Next: Invoking bibweb,  Prev: How to,  Up: How to

LaTeX file
==========

   In this section, we describe how to write your LaTeX file so that it
will produce output suitable for bibweb.

* Menu:

* Bibliography command::        What the \bibliography command should look like
* Citations::                   Formats for citations


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Bibliography command,  Next: Citations,  Prev: LaTeX file,  Up: LaTeX file

Bibliography command
--------------------

   You need to decide where you want to put the bibliographic
information that bibweb will give you; this should be a file ending in
`.bib'.  Suppose you decide to use a file called `jimbob.bib' (which
may or may not exist at this point).  Then you need the following line
in your LaTeX file:

       \bibliography{jimbob}

As indicated above, if you already have some other BibTeX files lying
around, and you also want to use these (say they're called `manny.bib',
`moe.bib', and `jack.bib'), then you should instead use the following
line:

       \bibliography{manny,moe,jack,jimbob}


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Citations,  Prev: Bibliography command,  Up: LaTeX file

Citations
---------

   There are two different formats for citations that bibweb knows how
to handle, and it handles them in different ways.

   * Simpler format:

            \cite{aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd-year}

     `aaa' gets sent as the author, `bbb', `ccc', and `ddd' get sent as
     miscellany (they can match anything, including the author, title,
     journal, reviewer, or the text of the review).  `year' should be
     of the form `<1995' or `>1995' or `=1995' or `1995', in which case
     bibweb only searches for papers from the appropriate years.
     `1995' is treated the same as `=1995'.  It seems that specifying a
     year or range of years slows things down tremendously, so you
     might want to avoid this.  Also, I think if `year' is in some
     other format, it will just get ignored.

     For example, `\cite{devinatz-hopkins-nilpotence}' matches two
     papers: one is "Nilpotence and stable homotopy theory, I" by
     Devinatz, Hopkins, and Smith; the other is "Morava's change of
     rings theorem" by Devinatz, for which "Hopkins" and "nilpotence"
     are mentioned in the review.

     If you want to avoid the second sort of match, you can use the more
     involved format.

   * More involved format:

            \cite{a1-a2-...-ak;t1-t2-...-tm;j1-j2-...jn;year}

     `year' should be just like field `year' in the simpler format, but
     it slows things down, so I would avoid it.  `a1', ..., `ak' are
     treated as authors, `t1', ..., `tm' are treated as words in the
     title, `j1', ..., `jn' are treated as words in the journal name.
     You don't have to include all of the fields.

     For example, `\cite{devinatz-hopkins;nilpotence}' matches only the
     paper "Nilpotence and stable homotopy theory, I" by Devinatz,
     Hopkins, and Smith.  `\cite{miller-wilkerson;vanishing-steenrod}'
     matches only "Vanishing lines for modules over the Steenrod
     algebra" by Miller and Wilkerson, as does
     `\cite{miller-wilkerson;vanishing-steenrod;;<1985}', as does
     `\cite{miller-wilkerson;vanishing-steenrod;pure;<1985}' (the paper
     appeared in the `Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra').

   * Using wildcards:

     You can use `*' as a wildcard; for instance,
     `\cite{adams;hopf-invar*-one}' would return the two papers by
     Adams called "On the non-existence of elements of Hopf invariant
     one".

     When using MathSciNet by hand, if you want to search for papers by
     Mike Hopkins, you could set the author field equal to `hopkins,
     m*'.  On the other hand, BibTeX treats commas as separators: if
     you give BibTeX the command `\cite{hopkins,m*;global}', BibTeX will
     treat `hopkins' as one source and `m*;global' as another.  So to
     get bibweb to do the right thing, you should use a period instead
     of a comma: use the command

            \cite{hopkins.m*;global}

     Bibweb will translate the `.' to a `,' before sending the query to
     MathSciNet, so this citation would produce

          %% Math Reviews number: 89g:55022
          @incollection {hopkins.m*;global,
              AUTHOR = {Hopkins, Michael J.},
               TITLE = {Global methods in homotopy theory},
           BOOKTITLE = {Homotopy theory (Durham, 1985)},
               PAGES = {73--96},
           PUBLISHER = {Cambridge Univ. Press},
             ADDRESS = {Cambridge},
                YEAR = {1987},
             MRCLASS = {55Q45 (55P42 55P60 55Q10)},
            MRNUMBER = {89g:55022},
          MRREVIEWER = {Douglas C. Ravenel},
          }



File: bibweb.info,  Node: Invoking bibweb,  Prev: LaTeX file,  Up: How to

Invoking bibweb
===============

* Menu:

* Basic operation::             Quick instructions
* Options::                     Options for running bibweb


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Basic operation,  Next: Options,  Prev: Invoking bibweb,  Up: Invoking bibweb

Basic operation
---------------

   In this section, we give the basic instructions for running bibweb,
as well as a brief description of what bibweb does.

       bibweb FILE

will run bibweb on FILE.  For example, to run bibweb on the file
`elvis', you type

       bibweb elvis

Then bibweb will run BibTeX on `elvis' and read through the list of
missing citations.  For each such citation, it searches MathSciNet, and
writes its results to the file `elvis.bib'.  Once it has done this, it
runs BibTeX again, to make use of any new citations.

   If bibweb can't find the file `elvis.aux' (which it wants to pass to
BibTeX), it prints an error message and stops.  If it can't write to
`elvis.bib', it should also print an error message and stop.

   By "searches MathSciNet", I mean that it fires up a web browser that
goes to the MathSciNet site, gives it the appropriate query, gets the
response, and then quits.  In recent versions of bibweb -- versions
0.50 and later -- it uses a web browser incorporated into perl.  (Older
versions used a program like `lynx' or `wget' for web browsing.)

   By "its results", I mean the following:

   * If bibweb finds exactly one entry matching your citation, it puts
     it in `elvis.bib' with the key you chose.  For instance, if you
     have

            \cite{kan-miller-splitting-spaces}

     then bibweb puts something like the following in `elvis.bib':

          %%   citation 'kan-miller-splitting-spaces'
          %% Math Reviews number: 57 #7582
          @article {kan-miller-splitting-spaces,
              AUTHOR = {Kan, Daniel M. and Miller, Edward Y.},
               TITLE = {Splitting spaces with finite group actions},
             JOURNAL = {Topology},
              VOLUME = {16},
                YEAR = {1977},
              NUMBER = {4},
               PAGES = {403--407},
             MRCLASS = {55C35},
            MRNUMBER = {57 \#7582},
          MRREVIEWER = {J. P. May},
          }

   * If it finds several matches (at most 5), it writes them all to
     `elvis.bib', but leaves the original citation undefined.  (The new
     ones have citations given by their Math Reviews numbers.)  So at
     this point, you have to edit `elvis.bib' to change the keys of the
     papers you're interested in, or you have to change your \cite
     command to match what was written into `elvis.bib'.

     For example, if you have

            \cite{serre;faisceaux}

     then there are two matches (or maybe there are three, now), which
     get entered into `elvis.bib' as

          %%   citation 'serre;faisceaux'
          %% Math Reviews number: 35 #3088
          @article {MR35:3088,
              AUTHOR = {Serre, Jean-Pierre},
               TITLE = {Prolongement de faisceaux analytiques coh\'erents},
             JOURNAL = {Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble)},
              VOLUME = {16},
                YEAR = {1966},
              NUMBER = {fasc. 1},
               PAGES = {363--374},
             MRCLASS = {32.50 (32.27)},
            MRNUMBER = {35 \#3088},
          MRREVIEWER = {B. Shiffman},
          }
          %% Math Reviews number: 16,953c
          @article {MR16:953c,
              AUTHOR = {Serre, Jean-Pierre},
               TITLE = {Faisceaux alg\'ebriques coh\'erents},
             JOURNAL = {Ann. of Math. (2)},
              VOLUME = {61},
                YEAR = {1955},
               PAGES = {197--278},
             MRCLASS = {14.0X},
            MRNUMBER = {16,953c},
          MRREVIEWER = {C. Chevalley},
          }

   * If there are more than 5 matches, it tells you that, and doesn't
     add any new entries to `elvis.bib'.  For example, if you have

            \cite{serre}

     then bibweb adds the following to `elvis.bib':

          %%   citation 'serre'
          %% More than 5 matches found.

     You can change the number `5' to something else by using the `-m'
     option.  *Note Options::.

   * If it doesn't find any matches, it tells you that, and doesn't add
     any new entries to `elvis.bib'.  For example, if you have

            \cite{serre-kan}

     then bibweb adds the following to `elvis.bib':

          %%   citation 'serre-kan'
          %% No matches found.

   * Occasionally, bibweb will say it only finds one match, but it will
     add several things to `elvis.bib'.  This happens when there are
     several papers whose reviews are all together on MathSciNet (see
     `\cite{dwyer-kan;obstruction-theory-diagrams}', for example).  In
     these cases, bibweb ought to do a good job of assigning your chosen
     bibliographical key to the correct entry, but you might want to
     double-check.


   Finally, note that if you give the citation

       \cite{serre}

and run bibweb, then run bibweb again, it will not query MathSciNet
again; instead it will tell you something like "You've searched for
`serre' before".


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Options,  Prev: Basic operation,  Up: Invoking bibweb

Options
-------

   bibweb can be run with several different options.

`-i FILE'
`--input=FILE'
     Run BibTeX on FILE.

`-o FILE'
`--output=FILE'
     Write output to FILE (after appending `.bib' to FILE, if
     necessary).

`--std'
     Write output to STDOUT (the screen, ordinarily).

`-c CITATION'
`--cite=CITATION'
     Look up only CITATION.  In this case, the output is written to the
     screen, unless you also use the `-o' option.

`-m NUM'
`--max=NUM'
     Return at most NUM matches to each citation.  Actually, if NUM is
     more than 50, I think bibweb returns at most 50 matches to each
     citation.

`-e SITE'
`--emath=SITE'
     Search MathSciNet at the web site SITE.  The default value is read
     from the environment variable MATHSCINET_SITE; if this variable
     hasn't been set, the default is `www.ams.org'.  Some other good
     choices are `ams.rice.edu', `ams.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de',
     `ams.mpim-bonn.mpg.de', `ams.u-strasbg.fr', and `ams.impa.br'--see
     the MathSciNet homepage for more information.  If you choose a
     value for SITE that's not from this list, bibweb prints a warning,
     but goes ahead and tries to use it anyway.  You can use a bit of
     shorthand for SITE: `ams' stands for `www.ams.org'; `rice' stands
     for `ams.rice.edu'; `bielefeld' stands for
     `ams.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de'; `bonn' stands for
     `ams.mpim-bonn.mpg.de'; `strasbg' stands for `ams.u-strasbg.fr';
     and `impa' stands for `ams.impa.br'.

`-sep CHAR'
     Use CHAR to delimit fields in long citation format, instead of
     semicolon (;)

`-lax'
     Use `%' to comment lines in BibTeX.  The default behavior is to
     use `@comment' as the comment character - this is officially
     supported by BibTeX, while `%' is not (although it seems to work).

`-h'
`--help'
     Print a short help message, and then quit.

   For example, any of the following commands

       bibweb -i test -o a -m 10
       bibweb test -o a -m 10
       bibweb -o a -m 10 test
       bibweb --output=a --max=10 test

has bibweb read the file `text.aux' and write output to `a.bib',
returning at most 10 matches for each citation.

The command

       bibweb --std -m 10 test

reads `test.aux' and writes the output to the screen (or whatever you
have STDOUT set to).  The command

       bibweb --emath=ams.rice.edu bozo

reads `bozo.aux', writes to `bozo.bib', and uses <ams.rice.edu> for the
MathSciNet search, as do the commands

       bibweb --emath=rice bozo
       bibweb -e rice bozo
       bibweb bozo -e rice

The command

       bibweb --emath=quack bozo

uses `quack' for the MathSciNet search.  In this case, bibweb will give
a warning (since `quack' is not one of the recognized MathSciNet
sites), and will produce no usable results (it will be fast, though).

   If you run the command

       bibweb -m 23 -c 'serre'

then bibweb will look for all articles with `serre' as the author.  In
this case, it will tell you that there were more than 50 matches found.
In version 0.60 of bibweb, there is an upper limit of about 50 on the
number of matches found -- if there are more matches than this, you
have to refine your search criteria to narrow things down.


File: bibweb.info,  Node: Installation,  Prev: How to,  Up: Top

Installation
************

   This is complicated: put the file `bibweb' in your path and make
sure it's executable.

   That's it.

   Actually, bibweb seems to require at least version 5.003 of perl, so
if you have an older version, you may have to upgrade.

   And of course, to use bibweb at all, you need to have a subscription
to MathSciNet.



Tag Table:
Node: Top198
Node: Introduction1196
Node: How to3287
Node: LaTeX file3590
Node: Bibliography command3963
Node: Citations4698
Node: Invoking bibweb8322
Node: Basic operation8552
Node: Options13537
Node: Installation16834

End Tag Table