ams2bib, version 1.0:  convert AmSTeX bibliography into BibTeX

Copyright (C) Arthur G. Werschulz <agw@cs.columbia.edu>
May be freely redistributed under the Gnu Public License.

ams2bib is a Perl script.  Its input is a file consisting of AmSTeX
bibliography entries.  It produces a file consisting of the same
bibliographic entries, but in BibTeX format.

Since ams2bib is written in Perl, it should run on any system on which
Perl is installed.  It has been tested on the following platforms:

   RedHat Linux
   Solaris
   Macintosh

Using ams2bib is very simple:  If you have a file "foo.tex" consisting
of AmSTeX bibliographic references, the command "ams2bib foo" produces
a file "foo.bib" containing the translations of these references into
BibTeX.  Keys are automatically generated, based on the authors' names
and yuear of publication.

Note: AmSTeX does not support the wide variety of reference types that
BibTeX does.  For example, the only way to indicate a technical report
in AmSTeX is to use the \paper referece, with the \paperinfo field
giving the technical report information.  Hence, a tool such as
ams2bib would be hard-pressed to produce a @TechReport bibliographic
entry.  Indeed, ams2bib only produces @Article, @Book, and @InBook
entries.  This means that it may be necessary to hand-edit the
resulting BibTeX file, looking for these kinds of corrections.

This package consists of the following files:

  README             this file
  ams2bib            the program itself
  ams2bib.1          the Unix man page for ams2bib
  ams2bib.txt        a plain text version of the Unix man page

One final comment:  TeX has been a major part of my professional life
over the last (almost) twenty years.  Although ams2bib is a tiny
little utility that only a few people may actually find useful, 
I am glad to be able to make a contribution (no matter how small) to
the TeX community.

    Art Werschulz