UK TeX FAQ -- question 31

### BibTeX Documentation

BibTeX, a program originally designed to produce bibliographies in conjunction with LaTeX, is explained in Section 4.3 and Appendix B of Leslie Lamport's LaTeX manual (see TeX-related books). The document "BibTeXing", contained in the file `btxdoc.tex`, gives a more complete description. The LaTeX Companion (see TeX-related books) also has information on BibTeX and writing BibTeX style files.

The document "Designing BibTeX Styles", contained in the file `btxhak.tex`, explains the postfix stack-based language used to write BibTeX styles (`.bst` files). The file `btxbst.doc` is the template for the four standard styles (`plain`, `abbrv`, `alpha`, `unsrt`). It also contains their documentation. The complete BibTeX documentation set (including the files above) is available on CTAN.

There is a Unix BibTeX man page in the web2c package (see TeX systems). Any copy you may find of a man page written in 1985 (before "BibTeXing" and "Designing BibTeX Styles" appeared) is obsolete, and should be thrown away.

`BibTeX documentation`
  biblio/bibtex/distribs/doc.tar.gz
`BibTeX documentation, in PDF`
  biblio/bibtex/contrib/doc.tar.gz