Getting “longnamesfirst” option to work with natbib in LaTeX - custom .bst

Question

I'm writing an MSc dissertation and I'm having difficulty getting the longnamesfirst option working in natbib.

My University has a very specific referencing style a little like APA, but not quite the same. I've used the docstrip utility to build a basic framework and then edited it to fit the requirements of my University.

Having tested it with the simplest possible document; applying my bst then trying it again with one of the defaults (\bibliographystyle{apacite}) I can see than natbib works as intended with apacite. It doesn't however produce correct results with my bst.

So my question: How does the .bst file link with natbib to enforce the "longnamesfirst" option?

Answer 1

I've come to a solution. Looks like my bst file wasn't correctly written to take advantage of natbib's longnamesfirst option. In particular, there are a few functions like format.full.names I didn't have. It appears natbib needs these to generate those crucial first few references.

A regeneration from latex makebst and a merge later and I'm good to go.