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TROFF Reference Database

Are you going to be writing a paper and/or a thesis that has lots of references? There is a family of commands that deals with a references database that may be just what you need! ADDBIB, SORTBIB, ROFFBIB, INDXBIB, LOOKBIB, and REFER all deal with keeping a database of references and processing it in different formats.

"Addbib"

provides an easy way to input your reference material, such as author, title, etc. and also allows an extra section to keep notes, such as "I got this book at Potter Library."

"Sortbib"

can be used to sort alphabetically your database.

"Roffbib"

can print out a listing of your entire database in a nice format.

"Indxbib"

can group multiple databases together, and provide indexed files that lookbib can search.

"Lookbib"

provides an easy way to search for specific titles, all related materials on a certain subject, or all the references by one author.

"Refer"

is the preprocessor to troff and nroff.

This family of commands was initially written to be used with nroff or troff, and the MS macros. You can use them with the MM macros if you call an additional file, called ref.mac. On some machines this file is in usr/custom/lib/ref.mac.

It is a good idea to start inputting your references via addbib as soon as you get them. If you wait until you have 400 references, you will have to spend hours coding the information into the computer. Another thing to check is whether anyone in your group already maintains a reference database on any of the subjects that you are researching.

The mechanism that the database uses is that a letter is assigned to each different item of information. For example,

     A     precedes an author's name,
     B     is the book name
     J     is a journal name.

Three letters are ignored by refer; these are:

     %X     Abstract - used by roffbib, not by refer
     %Y     Ignored by refer
     %Z     Ignored by refer

The abstract is normally used for storing those critical pieces of information that jog your memory as to what the book or article contained.

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