bibtex autokey + crossref + >1 bibtex file does not work

[Frederik Fouvry]

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In GNU Emacs 21.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2004-02-19 on cc.at.coli.uni-sb.de
configured using `configure  --prefix=/export/black --with-xpm --with-jpeg 
--with-tiff --with-gif --with-png --with-x --with-gcc --with-pop --with-sound'
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: POSIX
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: de_DE@euro
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_GB
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

In a BibTeX bibliography that contains entries that use the
"crossref" attribute whose target entry is located in another
file, the autokey facility does not find the attributes that are
required for the generation of the key.  Typically this is the
year.  The reason is obvious: only the current file is searched.
To make this work, one has to make BibTeX-mode aware of other
files that constitute the bibliography (like with the
string-files), and either search these files, or generate
on-the-fly one big temporary file/buffer.

Setting the variable would probably best be done in the local
variables section of the BibTeX file.

Thanks,

Frederik Fouvry