Exporting author names to bibtex

carhogg

I am trying to export my library to a bibtex file so that I can build a reference section in bibtex using the JFM style file (ftp://ftp.cup.cam.ac.uk/pub/texarchive/journals/latex/jfm-sty/).

My problem is that all author names need to be reduced to just the initials in the bibtex file. Currently, I need to replace the author names with just the initial so that they export to bibtex with just the initials. This is not ideal as I lose the information of the author's first name.

Is there a way of exporting from my library to a bibtex file and specifying that any first and middle names should be reduced to just the initial?

I know there are various conventions for the export of names discussed on this forum, but I couldn't find any discussion of this point, and I imagine that I face a common problem here. Possibly I could get the names in the bibtex file to be reduced to initials within my latex .sty file, but the standard .sty file shown above does not facilitate this. Manually altering the bibtex file is also a possibility, but this is not satisfactory really either.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, Charlie

noksagt

BibTeX is able to process author names, so the correct solution is to rely on it to do it for you. The styles you link to are very old. The journal links to:
http://journals.cambridge.org/data/relatedlink/jfm-ifc.zip
If those don't do it for you, you should probably refer your question to a forum that will support BibTeX (for advice on modifying the .BST file or for automatically processing the .BIB file outside of Zotero).

adamsmith

Is there a way of exporting from my library to a bibtex file and specifying that any first and middle names should be reduced to just the initial?

no, not without changing he bibtex translator.

I know there are various conventions for the export of names discussed on this forum, but I couldn't find any discussion of this point, and I imagine that I face a common problem here.

actually this is the first time this have come up ever, so I don't know how common this is.

Possibly I could get the names in the bibtex file to be reduced to initials within my latex .sty file, but the standard .sty file shown above does not facilitate this. Manually altering the bibtex file is also a possibility, but this is not satisfactory really either.

I really believe quite strongly that the bibtex style should handle this. We can't have an extra export option for every odd requirement of bibtex styles (how would people using bibtex only handle something like this btw?).