| I agree with much of what you say. I certainly find bibtex frustrating. On your specific points 1. I might be the only one, but I do sometimes, for the reasons you say. To debug it. But yes, debugging bibtex files is a a real pain. 2. yes, but that is hardly bibtex's fault, would be the same with any system. 2A. (same response as 2) 2B Yes, and so have both fields in the bibtex files. Its the publisher who decided what they want, DOI, ULR or both or neither. Not bibtex's fault 2C dont know what "gray literature" is, sorry. 3. YES! 3A, Think you always will need something like that regardless of bibliography system. The publisher dictates only first word in title is capitalised, how then do you tell it to capitalize USA or Mary? {} is as good as any alternative. 3B. yes. I never had any need for that. do you mean \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 3C. yes, to be safe, one needs these weird latex formatting for foreign characters. 3D. Yes. Well I have the time. When I get a bibtex entry from some external source, It usually needs tweaking. And usually fastest is just to write it manually. But its a a trivial amount of effort |