BibTex: Removing titles from reference list

[Alain Kessi]

murray...@vuw.ac.nz (Murray Forbes) wrote:
>The reference style I require doesn't include article titles. I'm currently
>removing the titles by changing the keyword 'title' to 'titles', however this
>results in a warning message for each article in the bibtex file. As I have
>several hundred articles, this gives a long list of warnings when
>bibtexing, and makes it difficult to see the real errors (trees for the forest
>type of thing).

The thing to change is the BibTeX style, not your .bib database. I'm
not familiar with the Harvard style, but in alpha.bst, what you'd have
to do is change

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ title empty$
{ "" }
{ title "t" change.case$ }
if$
}

into

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ "" }
}

(not tested, but should be close). Should be almost the same with the
Harvard style.

--
Alain Kessi (alain...@psi.ch)
at Paul Scherrer Institut, Zuerich, Switzerland

[Murray Forbes]

The reference style I require doesn't include article titles. I'm currently
removing the titles by changing the keyword 'title' to 'titles', however this
results in a warning message for each article in the bibtex file. As I have
several hundred articles, this gives a long list of warnings when
bibtexing, and makes it difficult to see the real errors (trees for the forest
type of thing).

Anyone know a better way to fix this?
NB:I'm using the Harvard bibtex style and latex2.09.

Thanks,
Murray.

Murray...@vuw.ac.nz

[Murray Forbes]

>murray...@vuw.ac.nz (Murray Forbes) wrote:
>>The reference style I require doesn't include article titles. I'm currently
>>removing the titles by changing the keyword 'title' to 'titles', however this
>>results in a warning message for each article in the bibtex file. As I have
>>several hundred articles, this gives a long list of warnings when
>>bibtexing, and makes it difficult to see the real errors (trees for the forest
>>type of thing).

>The thing to change is the BibTeX style, not your .bib database. I'm

>not familiar with the Harvard style, but in alpha.bst, what you'd have
>to do is change

>FUNCTION {format.title}
>{ title empty$
> { "" }
> { title "t" change.case$ }
> if$
>}

>into

>FUNCTION {format.title}
>{ "" }
>}

>(not tested, but should be close). Should be almost the same with the
>Harvard style.

>--
>Alain Kessi (alain...@psi.ch)
>at Paul Scherrer Institut, Zuerich, Switzerland

Apart from a slight typo;

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ ""
}

removes titles from all entries (not just articles) but still generates an
enpty title warning message.
What I found to work was modifying FUNCTION{article} to;

FUNCTION {article}
{ output.bibitem
list.label.output
" (" list.year * ")" * output.nonnull
author "author" item.check
% remove the empty title check for articles (to remove the warning message)
% title.field field.used =
% { skip$ }
% { format.title quote "title" output.check }
% if$
crossref missing$
...
which removes only the titles from article entries (which is what I wanted)
without generating warning messages.

Thanks to Alain for pointing me in the right direction.

Murray.
Murray...@vuw.ac.nz