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I have found a definite bug in BibTeX and I want to file it. However, there is no homepage dedicated to the program nor does its maintainer, Oren Patashnik, seem to have a homepage or publicly stated his e-mail address somewhere.

So, is there any proper way to draw the developer’s attention to this bug?

For the purpose of this question, assume that I ensured that it is really a bug, it is really happening in BibTeX (and not in some style file) and that there is no public statement that the bug is known.

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    How about you start posting it here so people can verify that this is indeed an bug, not just a possibly known feature
    – daleif
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 10:36
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    It's important to keep in mind that BibTeX, as a system, comprises both the executable program itself and the bibliography style file that informs the executable program how various bibliographic entries should be formatted. Without you providing more details about the alleged bug, it's not possible to determine if the bug is within the executable program or in the style file.
    – Mico
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 12:02
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    The fact that questions about bugs should be closed does not entail that questions about possible bugs should not be asked. [And it is easy to be really sure something is a bug and yet be wrong about it. Moreover, there are different varieties of bug, some of which are, and are known to be, in the 'won't fix' category.]
    – cfr
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 12:02
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    @Mico I suspect the question is meant to be general so doesn't depend on there even being a bug to report.
    – Joseph Wright ♦
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 12:11
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    The relevant annotation in the last uploaded version of bibtex.web (March 2010) is “Version 0.99d was released in March 2010. It made output lines breakable only at white_space (so that, for example, URLs would not be broken). Other known bugs (all minor) will be fixed in a subsequent release.”
    – egreg
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 12:16

1 Answer 1

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As with various parts of the TeX tool chain, often the most sensible way to report a bug in BibTeX is to raise the issue on the TeX Live mailing list. There are a range of TeX experts on that list and importantly the TeX Live developers are often in a good position to contact binary authors or to make changes to the code (license-dependent). Moreover, before that happens it's likely one or more list readers will test the input which leads the bug and will likely give feedback on whether it is a real issue or something which is documented behaviour. [Notably, http://mirrors.ctan.org/biblio/bibtex/base/README lists Karl Berry along with Oren Patashnik: Karl is one of the TeX Live team and is contactable.)

Another approach to reporting bugs in TeX material where contact details are not clear is to ask the CTAN team if they can pass on a message. They hold a list of e-mail addresses for uploaders, and while they cannot give out that data they can pass messages on. They may have contact details for BibTeX.

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