1 BibTeX

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     4 The previous section explained the process of listing references at the end of a document and embedding cross references. In this section let us explore the BibTeX environment for keeping track of references.

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     6 Using BibTeX is a very convenient method to use, when writing multiple documents in a single area or field. BibTeX allows you to create a database of all your references and use them as and when required. 

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     8 The BibTeX database is stored in a ``.bib`` file. The structure of the file is quite simple and an example is shown below. 

     9 ::

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    11   @book{Lamport94,

    12   author    = "Leslie Lamport",

    13   title     = "A Document Preparation System: User's Guide and Reference",

    14   publisher = "Addison-Wesley Professional",

    15   year      = "1994",

    16   edition    = "second",

    17   note      = "illustrations by Duane Bibby"

    18   }

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    20 Each bibliography entry starts with a declaration of the type of the reference being mentioned. The reference is in the above example is of the book type. BibTeX has a wide range of reference types, for example, ``article, book, conference, manual, proceedings, unpublished``.

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    22 The type of reference is followed by a left curly brace, and immediately followed by the citation key. The citation key, ``Lamport94`` in the example above is used to cite this reference using the command ``\cite{Lamport94}``. 

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    24 This is followed by the relevant fields and their values, listed one by one. Each entry must be followed by a comma to delimit one field from the other. 

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    26 To get your LaTeX document to use the bibliography database, you just add the following lines to your LaTeX document. 

    27 ::

    28 

    29   \bibliographystyle{plain}

    30   \bibliography{LaTeX}

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    32 Bibliography styles are files that tell BibTeX how to format the information stored in the ``.bib`` database file. The style file for this example is ``plain.bst``. Note that you do not need to add the ``.bst`` extension to the filename.  If you wish to achieve a particular style of listing the bibliography items and citing them, you should use an appropriate style file. 

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    34 The ``bibliography`` command specifies the file that should be used as the database for references. The file used in this example is ``LaTeX.bib``

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