[tex-live] natbib broken?

[Arthur Ogawa]

On 2009-10-11, at 06:04 , Joseph Wright wrote:

> Edd Barrett wrote:
>
> ...the newer versions of natbib do proper checks on whether the bst  
> file is author-date or numeric. The older natbib versions just  
> change the citation style without telling you. There has been quite  
> a bit of discussion of this!

I would be grateful to view the "quite a bit of discussion" on the  
subject of what natbib does when the bst file is not compatible with  
author-year citations. When a package like natbib changes its behavior  
such that older documents produce an error, I am concerned.

The test document uses the standard article.cls, which formats the  
bibliography as author-year, and uses plainnat.bst, which contains the  
following comment:

>  % For use with the `natbib.sty' package; emulates the corresponding
>  %   member of the `plain' family, but with author-year citations.

Has someone already looked into this problem? I am not seeing further  
posts in this thread than the one cited above.

Arthur Ogawa