BIB2XHTML

bib2xhtml - BibTeX bibliography to XHTML converter

bib2xhtml [ -a ] [ -b bibtex-options ] [ -c ] [ -d delimiter ] [ -h heading ] [ -i ] [ -k ] [ -m macro file ] [ -r ] [ -s style ] [ -t ] [ -v ] [ -u ] sourcefile [ htmlfile ]

bib2xhtml converts a bibtex-format bibliography file to XHTML. sourcefile may be either a BibTeX-format bibliography (.bib) file or a LaTeX-fomatted bibliography auxillary file (.aux). htmlfile will often be just part of a larger XHTML file; bib2xhtml attempts to update the XHTML file in place. It does this by searching htmlfile for two special strings, which delimit the bibliography part of the file. These strings are the XHTML comments

<!-- BEGIN BIBLIOGRAPHY delimiter -->

<!-- END BIBLIOGRAPHY delimiter -->

If these delimiters are found, the old bibliography between them is replaced with the new bibliography. Otherwise the new bibliography, with the appropriate delimiters, is appended to the end of htmlfile, and it will be necessary to move it to the proper location by hand. Note that it is possible for htmlfile to contain any number of bibliographies, and they may be updated independently. If no htmlfile is specified, the bibliography is written to standard output.

The tag of each BibTeX bibliography entry is converted into a name anchor (<A NAME="tag">) in htmlfile, and may be used to construct a link to this particular entry.

By default the contents of the bibliography are determined by the contents of the sourcefile. It is also possible to specify the contents of the bibliography in the htmlfile itself by setting the -i option and using two special strings to delimit the citations to be used for generating the bibliography. These strings are the XHTML comments

<!-- BEGIN CITATIONS delimiter -->

<!-- END CITATIONS delimiter -->

If these delimiters are found, the contents between them are searched for XHTML comments containing the citations (one citation per line), for example

<!-- BEGIN CITATIONS delimiter -->

<!-- \citation{knuth:1997}
\citation{knuth:1984} -->

<!-- END CITATIONS delimiter -->

These citations are then used for choosing the bibliography entries from the sourcefile.

Special Field Processing

Several BibTeX fields are treated specially. The filenames specified in the postscript, pdf, and dvi fields are relative to the htmlfile directory. In addition, bib2xhtml recognizes compressed or gzipped files (those with filenames ending in .Z, .gz, or .z).

url

If the url field exists, a link (‘‘A’’ tag) is created. The destination of the link is the url tag’s value. The bibliography entry’s title is the source of the link. This can be used to create a link to a XHTML version of the paper, or to a version that is available by ftp.

mailto

If the mailto field exists, a link (‘‘A’’ tag) is created. The destination of the link is the mailto tag’s value. The bibliography entry’s author name is the source of the link.

postscript

If the postscript field exists, its value is used as the name of a PostScript file. bib2xhtml creates a link to the file. , and updates htmlfile with the number of pages and size of the PostScript file.

doi

If the doi field exists, its value is used as the designation of a digital object identifier. bib2xhtml creates a link to the object through http://dx.doi.org and updates htmlfile with the doi as a hyperlink. The doi should normally be in a canonical form like the following: doi:10.1145/363347.363387. However, if the doi designator is formed as an HTTP hyperlink, it will be converted to the canonical form by replacing the HTTP protocol designation and the host name of the hyperlink with the doi: literal string.

pdf

If the pdf field exists, its value is used as the name of a PDF (portable document format) file. bib2xhtml creates a link to the file and updates htmlfile with the size of the PDF file.

dvi

If the dvi field exists, its value is used as the name of a TeX DVI file. bib2xhtml creates a link to the file and updates htmlfile with the number of pages and size of the DVI file.

author, keywords

The full author and keywords fields of each BibTeX entry are included in htmlfile as XHTML comments, and may be used by CGI scripts (such as bibsearch, which is supplied) to select only certain entries.

Hints

bib2xhtml’s LaTeX to XHTML conversion is not very smart. If something isn’t being converted correctly, try doing it in a different way.

bib2xhtml does not currently understand \verb. To get a tilde into a filename or an embedded URL, use \~{}. On the other hand, entries containing URL fields or \url{} commands, are correctly converted into hyperlinks. Leave such hyperlinks as they are; do not embed any LaTeX commands in them.

The lists that bib2xhtml generates contain CSS hooks of the class bib2xhtml. You can therefore modify the appearance of the lists by adding style entries like the following in the web page’s header.

       <style type="text/css">
            dl.bib2xhtml dd { padding-bottom: 1em }
       </style>

       <style type="text/css">
            ul.bib2xhtml li { padding-bottom: 1em }
       </style>

-a

Include the BibTeX file’s abstract field in the bibliography.

-b bibtex-options

Provide the specified options to the BibTeX program.

-c

Sort chronologically. Normally, the bibliography is ordered first by author and then by year. With this option, the bibliography is ordered by year and then author.

-d delimiter

Specify the delimiter that sets the bibliography off from the rest of the XHTML file. The default delimiter is the name of the bibliography file with the .bib extension stripped.

-h heading

Use the string heading instead of the default title when creating a new htmlfile. If updating an existing htmlfile, this option is ignored.

-i

The citations are included in the htmlfile. When this option is set, the sourcefile must be a .bib file.

-k

In labeled styles (alpha, named, plain, and unsort) append to the label of each entry its BibTeX key. Thus, the label of each entry will consist of the original label, followed by an em-dash, followed by the BibTeX key.

-m macro file

Specify a BibTeX macro file to supply to BibTeX when processing the bibliography file. Macro files typically contain local abbreviations and other macro definitions.

-r

Reverse the chronological sorting order. Normally, the bibliography is sorted (by year; BibTeX ignores the month) from the earliest entry to the latest entry. With this option, the order is reversed. Note that to obtain a bibliography ordered by chronological order you must also specify the -c option.

-s style

Create a style-style bibliography. Supported styles are empty (the default), plain, alpha, named, unsort, and unsortlist. An empty bibliography is a bulleted list. A plain bibliography is a numbered list. unsort is like plain except that the entries in the XHTML file are in the same order as as they are in the source file. unsortlist is like unsort but entry labels are bullets instead of numbers. An alpha bibliography has labels that are in the BibTeX alpha style. A named bibliography has labels of the form [name, year].

-t

Write a timestamp with the date at which the bibliography was updated to htmlfile.

-v

Report version number on stderr.

-u

Convert LaTeX special characters into the corresponding Unicode characters, and output XML coded in UTF-8. The output produced by this option may be easier to parse and validate with some XML parsers. By default LaTeX special characters are converted into HTML character entities.

html-a.bst

alpha XHTML BibTeX style file

html-n.bst

named XHTML BibTeX style file

html-u.bst

unsort XHTML BibTeX style file

html-aa.bst, html-na.bst, html-ua.bst

versions of the above style files with abstracts

bibsearch

a CGI script for performing bibliography searches

perl(L), bibtex(L).

The LaTeX to XHTML translation, while decent, is not perfect.

Requires bibtex and perl. However, I think that most sites that would want to convert BibTeX to XHTML will already have both programs installed.

Relies on dviselect to count the number of pages in a DVI file.

David Hull while at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Diomidis Spinellis (dds@aueb.gr), Athens University of Economics and Business.

The program was originally written as bib2html by David Hull in 1996, who maintained it until 1998 (version 1.33). In 2002, due to the lack of visible updates on the web, the program was adopted for maintenance, distribution, and further evolution by Diomidis Spinellis. Changes made by him include support for XHTML 1.0 and documentation bug fixes. The first public release of the maintenance effort was in 2004 (version 2.1). On March 2004 the program was renamed into bib2xhtml to avoid confusion with projects using the name bib2html . Panos Louridas (louridas@aueb.gr) added the functionality for including the citations in the htmlfile .

See http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/textproc/bib2xhtml for the latest version. This is free software, and may be modified or redistributed under the terms of the GNU Public License.