BibTeX key alignment and localization

Question

I'm having problems with my bibtex keys. According to my style guide, they should be left-aligned, whereas now they're right-aligned. Is there a way to change that? I am using amsalpha bibliography style.

Also, in the authors list, I need to have a localized value of 'and' before the last author. I've found a bunch of bibtex localization files in it's installation directory. Will I need to copy one and change strings in it? How do I tell bibtex which one to use (I'm using XeLaTeX for my document)?

Removing the 'and' completely and just leaving the comma before it will do too. I do not need a good solution to this one right now, a quick one will suffice.

EDIT Ok, i managed to figure out the right alignment of keys is cause by natbib package. I include MWE below:

mwe.tex:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage{natbib}

\bibliographystyle{amsalpha}

\begin{document}

\cite{hu62}
\cite{ss97}
\cite{crm03}

\bibliography{mwe}

\end{document}

mwe.bib:

@Article{hu62,
    title = {Visual Pattern Recognition by Moment Invariants},
    journal = {IRE Transactions on Information Theory},
    pages = {179--187},
    year = {1962},
    author = {Hu, Ming-Kuei}
}

@Conference{ss97,
    title = {Hu’s moment invariants: How invariant are they under skew and perspective transformations?},
    booktitle = {IEEE WESCANEX 97: Communications, Power and Computing. Conference Proceedings.},
    pages = {292--295},
    year = {1997},
    author = {Sivaramakrishna, Radhika and Shashidhar, N. S.}
}

@Article{crm03,
    title = {A comparative analysis of algorithms for fast computation of Zernike moments},
    journal = {Pattern Recognition},
    pages = {731--742},
    year = {2003},
    author = {Chong, Chee-Way and Raveendran, P. and Mukundan, R.}
}

I am using bibtex and xelatex.

Answer 1

You may try babelbib; I've adapted your example to Italian and I get "e" instead of "and".

\begin{filecontents*}{mwe.bib}
@Article{hu62,
    title = {Visual Pattern Recognition by Moment Invariants},
    journal = {IRE Transactions on Information Theory},
    pages = {179--187},
    year = {1962},
    author = {Hu, Ming-Kuei}
}

@Conference{ss97,
    title = {Hu's moment invariants: How invariant are they under skew and perspective transformations?},
    booktitle = {IEEE WESCANEX 97: Communications, Power and Computing. Conference Proceedings.},
    pages = {292--295},
    year = {1997},
    author = {Sivaramakrishna, Radhika and Shashidhar, N. S.}
}

@Article{crm03,
    title = {A comparative analysis of algorithms for fast computation of Zernike moments},
    journal = {Pattern Recognition},
    pages = {731--742},
    year = {2003},
    author = {Chong, Chee-Way and Raveendran, P. and Mukundan, R.}
}\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage[italian]{babelbib}

\bibliographystyle{babalpha}

\begin{document}

\cite{hu62}
\cite{ss97}
\cite{crm03}

\bibliography{mwe}

\end{document}

Hyphenation is incorrect, though. Check babelbib documentation.

Answer 2

I think I've found solutions to both of my problems.

Keys can be made left-aligned with following code in your preamble or style file (source):

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@biblabel}[1]{[#1]\hfill}
\makeatother

For the last delimiter problem, I had to edit amsalpha.bst file, which I found under /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/bibtex/bst/amscls in my machine (make sure to do a backup).

Specific changes:

1. Line 351 { "," * } to { "" *}. This removes the comma before the last author.
2. Line 356 { " and " * t * } to { " ir " * t * }, where ir is a localized value of and, of course. Mind the spaces.

It is not the prettiest solution, but i don't think there's another one. As you might notice, the strings in amsalpha.bst are hardcoded, so the only way to change them is by hand. I would be happy if anyone more experienced could confirm this.

These solutions work with

BibTeX 0.99d (TeX Live 2011)
kpathsea version 6.0.1