[9fans] need feedback: bibTeX users?

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

Hello,

Since I'm finishing the task I have undertaken---provide a complete core
TeX system with MetaPost---, there is one piece that is a WEB program,
hence needs to be translated, and that may be used: bibTeX.

I don't use it myself but since "third millenium state of the art
academic research" is evaluated by the same algorithm as the one
used by Google to rank pages: number of citations and cross citations,
I guess it is fundamental for an author to be able to cite a maximum
of works he has not read, crediting people that have actually signed
them but not actually written them, keeping in mind that it is not
a problem that none of them has ever grasped the subject since it
doesn't make sense.

The problem is that the version of bibTeX in the sources I have started
with is 0.99c; it is not rocket science; it seems to me overkill to not
just handle the bibliography with normal text utilities; and it seems
that there are other versions in use now mainly with LaTeX.

So questions:

1) Are there people using it?
2) What version?
3) Is there now a non WEB based implementation?---in this case I could
simply forget about it.---

I need feedback since my main engineering tool is still /dev/null!
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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