[texhax] NatBib-based styles and unusual year or author entries

[Philip G. Ratcliffe]

> I sometimes use NatBib-based bibliography styles to get author/year
> citations.  But I also sometimes read books that have more than one
> edition, and like to capture the first-edition year as well as the
> year of the edition I'm actually citing, e.g.:
> 
> @BOOK{Jeffreys:1961:TP,
> author="Harold Jeffreys",
> editor="N. F. Mott and E. C. Bullard and D. H. Wilkinson",
> title="Theory of Probability",
> publisher="Clarendon Press",
> year="1961 (1939)",
> address="Oxford",
> edition="Third",
> series="The International Series of Monographs on Physics"
> }
> 
> I also sometimes read works by authors who've changed their surname
> between two reprints of a work, and like to keep track of that as
> well, e.g.
> 
> @INCOLLECTION{Lewis:1995:D,
> editor="John G. Noyes and Jim Asher and Owen C. Jones and Geoffrey
> F. Phillips",
> booktitle="{K}aye {\&} {L}aby: Tables of Physical and Chemical
> Constants",
> publisher="Longman",
> year="1995 (1911)",
> address="Harlow",
> edition="Sixteenth",
> author="Lewis[ Peggs], S[ylvia] L.",
> title="Densities",
> chapter="2.2.1",
> pages="41--43",
> note="{URL}:
> $\langle{}$\url{http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/
> 2_2/2_2_1.html}$\rangle{}$"
> }
> 
> The trouble is, bibliography entries with either the multiple year
> field or the multi-surname author field confuse NatBib and its
> descendants, so that they revert to numeric citations.  So, any ideas
> how I can get author/year citations _and_ keep this sort of
> non-standard author and year information in the reference list,
> please?

Well, I don't' have any problems with the first citation entry above but the
second is bound to cause problems: the use of explicit square brackets
inside an optional argument would send any LaTeX command haywire.  Try using
\lbrack and \rbrack instead.

Cheers,  Phil