citation2tex allows to obtain a complete reference from SPIRES in ready-to-use TeX-format. Just select a preprint number eg, 9602022, in any window (say in OmniWeb), and click citation2tex:
If all goes well (connection to SLAC-SPIRES works), there will be a beep and you can paste the correct and updated reference directly into your TeX file:
A purely numerical selection defaults to hep-th, except for numbers greater than 200 where it defaults to hep-ph. For other possibilities, include the archive name as in hep-th/9603201. One can invoke citation2tex also from the UNIX command line.
The macro \nihil{ - title - } needs then to be defined to either neglect the title: \def\nihil#1{}, or to put it in: \def\nihil#1{{\it #1}}. Similar for \eprt{-eprint No-}, eg, \def\eprt#1{{\tt #1}}.
spires2tex is designed for use when a LANL archive preprint number is not available (papers before 1992). Here you need to use SPIRES via WWW, and make an arbitrary search with WWWBRIEFLATEX output format selected. Then select with the mouse the relevant entry (making sure to select complete lines) and click spires2tex:
If all goes well, you can paste the transformed reference into your TeX file after the beep.
Of course, if you prefer Latex, you can paste the WWWBRIEFLATEX output directly in.
