i dont know much about how lyx handles bibtex underneath the hood - but recently i wrote some tools to keep track of my own reference collection. these are some of my experiences:
bibtex is inherently difficult to parse - because the format is very flexible. i dont think a "simple" parser will do - i picked up somewhere one should use a YACC compiler (yet another compiler compiler) for making a proper parser. there do, however, exists different parsers in the public domain. google for btparse (powerfull parser written in c). also, i think dana jacobsen may have some hints: http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~jacobsd/bib/bp/ at least he got the availible BibTeX format description: http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~jacobsd/bib/formats/bibtex.html (and the references therein looks promising) perhaps a parser upgrade will be worth while? best regards martin On Tue, Jul 19, 2005 at 03:56:06PM +0200, Sven Schreiber wrote: > Recently I seem to be having more problems than usual with the bibtex > database access in the "insert citation" dialog (obvious parsing errors, > the lower-left "info" area often shows a relatively wild combination of > different entries). So it is getting annoying and I want to do something > about it. > > afaik the weaknesses of the used simple bibtex parser are known, but not > to me, so please what are recommendations for the bibtex file format so > that the parser won't get confused? > > thanks for any hints, > sven
