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Help with Camel Citator Package?

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zizhe...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 15, 2007, 5:28:12 PM12/15/07
to
Hi,

I need some help with the camel citator package, and can't seem to
contact the developer Frank G Bennett Jr at all (all his email
addresses bounce). I've been trying to use it to write my coursework
in law, and whereas it is happy to do the citation in the footnote,
there seems to be a problem with the \printbibliography{all} command
and it refuses to print a bibliography apart from a heading
"References". I am not very familiar with the whole system - I used to
study in the biological sciences and had Latex suggested to me by a
physicist friend. I used it to write my PhD thesis and found it much
preferable to Word. Now that I am studying law, I needed a
bibliography package that would cite the case authorities and camel
sounded ideal. However, this refusal to compile properly has been
driving me crazy!

I'm including below the skeletons of my .tex file and .bib file (with
just one authority). It compiles fine without either the \source or
\printbibliography commands (which is kind of the whole point...)
using pdflatex, bibtex, then pdflatex again. With the \source and
\printbibliography it complains that:

l.69 \printbibliography
{all}
?
(C+A.brf)
\tf@brf=\write4

! Argument of \@law@headersearch has an extra }.
<inserted text>
\par
l.69 \printbibliography{all}

?
Runaway argument?
! Paragraph ended before \@law@headersearch was complete.
<to be read again>
\par
l.69 \printbibliography{all}

?
! Argument of \@law@headersearch has an extra }.
<inserted text>
\par
l.69 \printbibliography{all}

?
Runaway argument?
! Paragraph ended before \@ law@headersearch was complete.
<to be read again>
\par
l.69 \printbibliography{all}

?


===================================================
Camel bibliography
Document type: subject-classified cites
Bibliography type: all citations
Action: header only (not yet implemented)
===================================================

LaTeX Warning: Empty `thebibliography' environment on input line 69.

___________________________________________________________________________

Here is the .tex file skeleton:

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,12pt]{article}
%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\usepackage{a4}
\usepackage{camel}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\citationsubject{case}{List of Cases}
\citationsubject{statute}{List of Statutes}
\citationsubject{article}{List of Articles}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%
\begin{document}
\citationstyle{law}
\citationdata{article,case,statute}
\forcefootnotes
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
applicable only to those matters residing firmly in the public law
arena\source[s=article,v=101]{wade}[195-196].

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\printbibliography{all}
\end{document}

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And the single authority I have tried to cite is in the .bib file:

@ARTICLE{wade,
AUTHOR = {H.W.R. Wade},
TITLE = {Procedure and Prerogative in Public Law},
JOURNAL = {The Law Quarterly Review},
YEAR = {1985},
volume = {101},
pages = {180-199},
month = {Apr}
}


________________________________________________________________

Any help would be greatly appreciated. It would have be in "fool-
proof" speak suitable for a humanities student though...

Thank you.

Philip A. Viton

unread,
Dec 16, 2007, 11:38:14 AM12/16/07
to

As far as I can see, Caml isn't being developed any more (pity, but
there it is). However, if your needs don't include case citations (ie
you're just citing to articles, books etc) then you don't really need
caml at all: one of the existing citation styles should work just fine,
or else you could use custom-bib to design your own style. Another
promising alternative is biblatex, but you do need some (fairly small)
knowledge of latex macros to modify the included styles.

--
Philip A. Viton
Ohio State University

Robin Fairbairns

unread,
Dec 17, 2007, 11:40:25 AM12/17/07
to
zizhe...@gmail.com writes:
>I need some help with the camel citator package, and can't seem to
>contact the developer Frank G Bennett Jr at all (all his email
>addresses bounce).

i think i knew that; however, i've now updated ctan's data of him to
record we don't know where he is.

>I've been trying to use it to write my coursework
>in law, and whereas it is happy to do the citation in the footnote,
>there seems to be a problem with the \printbibliography{all} command
>and it refuses to print a bibliography apart from a heading
>"References". I am not very familiar with the whole system - I used to
>study in the biological sciences and had Latex suggested to me by a
>physicist friend. I used it to write my PhD thesis and found it much
>preferable to Word. Now that I am studying law, I needed a
>bibliography package that would cite the case authorities and camel
>sounded ideal. However, this refusal to compile properly has been
>driving me crazy!
>

>Any help would be greatly appreciated. It would have be in "fool-
>proof" speak suitable for a humanities student though...

i'm afraid i can't help: i played with camel a bit back when it was
new, but never really had it working in earnest.

i wonder whether any of the packages listed in:

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=bibinline

offer any way forward (i.e., abandoning camel altogether).

of course, if you're operating in german, the jurabib package was
designed for your delectation. i've no idea how well its ideas
transfer to other legal traditions (largely because my experience of
these things is largely limited to what people say here...).
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge

zizhe...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 17, 2007, 12:44:55 PM12/17/07
to
Thank you for replying!

I've now got Camel to be semi-functional, although it is still
severely crippled. I do unfortunately need to cite cases, and the
other citation packages available do not look as suitable for in-
footnote citations and producing separate tables of cases/articles/
statutes at the end. I now have a different problem - which is
hopefully rather more obvious albeit also rather more revealing of my
lack of computing knowledge!

Bibtex refuses to run if I have more than about five sources in
the .bib file, and I suspect that this is because I need to expand the
wizard-defined function space of Bibtex to more than 6000, as the
camel documentation states (at least I hope that is why - Bibtex just
freezes and doesn't even give an error message...). I have managed to
find a bibtex.ch file contained in the camel distribution which
expands the wiz-def func space from the default 3000 to 10000 - but I
have no idea what to do with it! How do I use this .ch file to
actually change my Bibtex? I am running Windows Vista (I know, a true
sign of one not at all au-fait with computing...) and the MikTex 2.7
distribution, editing my files in WinEdt.

I'm afraid that any help would have to be a kind of step-by-step
idiot's guide!

I have to hand in this piece of coursework tomorrow and have already
spent about 10 times as much time as I anticipated on it trying to get
the citation sorted. I hope I don't have to go back and type all the
cases and materials by hand in the footnotes...

Thanks again.

Zizhen Yang, London

Juergen Fenn

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Dec 17, 2007, 2:50:40 PM12/17/07
to
zizhe...@gmail.com schrieb:

> I've now got Camel to be semi-functional, although it is still
> severely crippled. I do unfortunately need to cite cases, and the
> other citation packages available do not look as suitable for in-
> footnote citations and producing separate tables of cases/articles/
> statutes at the end.

If you are looking for a package that compiles a table of cases etc. you might
like to have a look at the jurarsp package ("rsp" stands for
"Rechtssprechung", or jurisdiction). Unfortunately, the documentation is in
German only and it was clearly written with German legal citations in mind,
but it's certainly worth a look anyway if you know how to read the code.

Jürgen.

Joseph Wright

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Dec 17, 2007, 3:01:43 PM12/17/07
to

Have you tried:

bibtex8 --wolfgang <name>.aux

which will run the largest-available pre-built bibtex? This is
usually enough for most situations.

Joseph Wright

zizhe...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 17, 2007, 3:18:06 PM12/17/07
to
Yes, I've tried bibtex8 --wolfgang <filename> to no avail. I think
camel really does need an expansion of the wiz-def func space. Is it
very difficult to do the expansion?

Thanks,

Zizhen

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