Editing BibTeX (section)

==Processor==
The processor program works with several specific files to produce the reference list and format the citations. In the words of the program's author Oren Patashnik, the processor works as follows:<ref name="sourcecode">{{Cite web |title=BibTeX WEB source code |url=http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/bibliography/bibtex/base/bibtex.web |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927042356/http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/bibliography/bibtex/base/bibtex.web |website=www.tex.ac.uk |archive-date=September 27, 2011 |access-date=May 24, 2011}}</ref>

<blockquote>
It takes as input:

{{ordered list|type=lower-alpha
        |1=an <code class="file">.aux</code> file produced by LaTeX on an earlier run;
        |2=a <code class="file">.bst</code> file (the style file), which specifies the general reference-list style and specifies how to format individual entries, and which is written by a style designer [..] in a special-purpose language [..], and
        |3=<code class="file">.bib</code> file(s) constituting a database of all reference-list entries the user might ever hope to use.
}}

BibTeX chooses from the <code class="file">.bib</code> file(s) only those entries specified by the <code class="file">.aux</code> file (that is, those given by LaTeX's {{code|lang=LaTeX|code=\cite}} or {{code|lang=LaTeX|code=\nocite}} commands), and creates as output a <code class="file">.bbl</code> file containing these entries together with the formatting commands specified by the <code class="file">.bst</code> file [..]. LaTeX will use the <code class="file">.bbl</code> file, perhaps edited by the user, to produce the reference list.
</blockquote>

===History===
BibTeX was created by [[Oren Patashnik]] and [[Leslie Lamport]] in 1985.<ref name="sourcecode" /> The program is written in [[Web (programming system)|WEB/Pascal]].<ref name="sourcecode" />

Version 0.98f was released in March 1985.<ref name="sourcecode" />

With version 0.99c (released February 1988), a stationary state was reached for 22 years.<ref name="sourcecode" />

In March 2010, version 0.99d was released to improve [[URL]] printing. Further releases were announced.<ref name="sourcecode" />

===Reimplementations===
;BibTeXu
:A reimplementation of bibtex (by Yannis Haralambous and his students) that supports the UTF-8 character set. Taco Hoekwater of the [[LuaTeX]] team criticized it in 2010 for poor documentation and for generating errors that are difficult to debug.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-06-01 |title=BibTeXU |url=http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.live/26044 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304101017/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.live/26044 |archive-date=2016-03-04 |access-date=2016-04-21 |website=permalink.gmane.org}}</ref>
;bibtex8
:A reimplementation of bibtex that supports 8-bit character sets.<ref name="ctan-bibtex8" />
;CL-BibTeX
:A completely compatible reimplementation of bibtex in [[Common Lisp]], capable of using bibtex .bst files directly or converting them into human-readable Lisp .lbst files.<ref name="ctan-bibtex8" />  CL-BibTeX supports [[Unicode]] in Unicode Lisp implementations, using any character set that Lisp knows about.
;MLBibTeX
:A reimplementation of BibTeX focusing on multilingual features, by Jean-Michel Hufflen.<ref>{{Cite web |title=MlBibTeX's Architecture &#124; Zeeba TV |url=http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/mlbibtex-architecture |access-date=2016-04-21 |website=river-valley.zeeba.tv}}</ref>
;[[Biber (LaTeX)|BibLaTeX]]
:A complete reimplementation. "It redesigns the way in which LaTeX interacts with BibTeX at a fairly fundamental level. With biblatex, BibTeX is only used to sort the bibliography and to generate labels. Instead of being implemented in BibTeX's style files, the formatting of the bibliography is entirely controlled by TeX macros."<ref>Description of the package biblatex from Debian's wheezy distribution as of May 2011.</ref> It uses the bibliography processing program [[Biber (LaTeX)|Biber]] and offers full Unicode and theming support. BibLaTeX comes with a new file format specification that uses the same syntax as the BibTeX file format but with more and different bibliographic entry types and field types.
;Bibulous
:A drop-in BibTeX replacement based on style templates, including full Unicode support, written in Python.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bibulous documentation — Bibulous 1.3.2 documentation |url=https://nzhagen.github.io/bibulous/ |access-date=2016-04-21 |website=nzhagen.github.io}}</ref>