[OS X TeX] Who is using biblatex?

[Simon Spiegel]

On 30.11.2010, at 20:24, Alan T Litchfield wrote:

> 
> On 30/11/2010, at 5:14 PM, Simon Spiegel wrote:
> 
>> 
>> He is reading this. ;)
>> 
>> I've been using biblatex since about version 0.3 and I've just finished my second book which makes heavy use of it. To make this short: As long as there isn't a very specific reason why you have to use traditional bibtex, switch to biblatex – the sooner the better. Biblatex is so much more capable than traditional bibtex, there's really little reason not to use it. It's not only the additional fields, it's also the fact that everyone with average knowledge of LaTeX can easily adapt his own style (something which has been almost impossible with traditional bibtex) and that many of the traditional limitations of bibtex simply don't exist anymore with biblatex. Also, biblatex's manual is simply superb.
>> 
>> As for sound and film references: It does of course depend on your needs whether the available styles are good enough for you. But even if they're not, the big plus of biblatex is that you can easily adapt an existing style to your specific needs (I can send you my style, but since it's heavily geared toward German speaking academia, it might be of little use for you).
>> 
>> Also, if you use biblatex, it's better not to use bibtex (the program) or bibtex8 respectively, but biber to do the sorting. It handles UTF8, doesn't know the memory limitations of bibtex and is the way biblatex will go in the future. A ready-to-use binary for OSX can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/current/binaries/OSX_Intel/biber.tar.gz/download
>> 
>> 
> 
> That is very good news on the one hand but on the other, not so good.
> 
> On the one hand I have been plagued with the UTF8 limitations of bibtex, that is true, and biblatex fits the bill with what I need, plus much more it seems.
> 
> On the other, I checked out biber but there is only an intel version. No powerpc version and it doesn't seem to want to compile on the G5 without more effort than I am prepared to give it at this time.

Of course, what is difficult, always lies in the eye of the beholder, but compiling biber yourself really isn't so difficult. You mainly need a proper perl installation (I use the macports installation) and then you need to install a bunch of perl modules via cpan. Depending on how much you're used to working with the terminal and with perl, this is certainly doable.

Simon
--
Simon Spiegel
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