bibtex81
8-bit big bibtex
Usage
bibtex8 [options]
aux-file
Overview
BibTeX8 is an 8-bit implementation of BibTeX written in C. It has been enhanced by adding the following features:
- "big" (32-bit) and customisable capacity
- flexible support for non-English languages using 8-bit character sets
BibTeX8 accepts 8-bit characters in its input files, and writes 8-bit characters to its output files. The character set is defined by an external configuration file --- the Codepage and Sort order ("CS") file. By default, it reads a specific CS file "88591lat.csf", which defines ISO 8859-1 character set and its alphabetical sorting order including accented characters.
Options
-
-? --help -
display some brief help text.
-
-7 --traditional -
operate in the original 7-bit mode, no CS file used. Only 7-bit ASCII characters are supported, and they are sorted by ASCII code value.
-
-8 --8bit -
force 8-bit mode, no CS file used. All 8-bit characters (code > 127) are treated as letters, and they are sorted by their code value.
-
-c --csfile FILE -
read FILE as the BibTeX character set and sort definition file. Note that options
-7,-8and-care exclusive.
-
-d --debug TYPE -
report debugging information. TYPE is one or more of all, csf, io, mem, misc, search.
-
-s --statistics -
report internal statistics.
-
-t --trace -
report execution tracing.
-
-v --version -
report BibTeX version.
-
-B --big -
set large BibTeX capacity.
-
-H --huge -
set huge BibTeX capacity.
-
-W --wolfgang -
set really huge BibTeX capacity for Wolfgang.
-
-M --min_crossrefs ## -
set min_crossrefs to ##.
-
--mcites ## -
allow ## \cites in the .aux files (deprecated).
-
--mentints ## -
allow ## integer entries in the .bib databases (deprecated).
-
--mentstrs ## -
allow ## string entries in the .bib databases (deprecated).
-
--mfields ## -
allow ## fields in the .bib databases (deprecated).
-
--mpool ## -
set the string pool to ## bytes (deprecated).
-
--mstrings ## -
allow ## unique strings.
-
--mwizfuns ## -
allow ## wizard functions (deprecated).
8BIT latin letters support
BibTeX8 supports extended features to handle 8bit latin letters. Several built-in functions in bibliography styles are enhanced as follows.
- &
-
Pops the top two (integer) literals and pushes their bitwise AND.
- |
-
Pops the top two (integer) literals and pushes their bitwise OR.
chr.to.int$,int.to.chr$-
The function is the same as original BibTeX but 8bit characters are accepted.
width$-
The function is the same as original BibTeX but letters of Latin-1 are supported.
History
- Arch Linux 2026-11-01 to Debian 13 (Trixie): the text shown here
- Debian 12 (Bookworm)
- Debian 11 (Bullseye)
- Debian 10 (Buster) to Debian 4.0 (Etch)