[OS X TeX] Re: LaTeX and APA

[Herbert Schulz]

On Mar 19, 2011, at 7:29 AM, LuKreme wrote:

> On 18-Mar-2011, at 09:35, Alan Munn wrote:
>> 
>> If you are mainly concerned about the formatting of citations/bibliography, then the biblatex-apa style for biblatex is the most up-to-date that I am aware of. It implements the 6th ed. APA guide.
> 
> OK. Now, when I fire up TeX Live Utility and type in 'apa' in the search field, I get no results. If I put in biblatex I get
> 
> biblatex
> biblatex-chicago
> 
> How do I get biblatex-apa installed correctly with my Mac TeX install?
> 
>> biblatex-mla is usable with the apa documentclass  if you load it with the [noapacite] option.
> 
> Same question, mla returns no results, so how do I get it installed? And will these packages, once installed, get updated via Tex Live?
> 
> 
>> Switching from apacite to biblatex is pretty straightforward; you don't need to change you bib file, but you may need to adjust the actual citation commands to match the biblatex-apa cite commands.
> 
> I don't have any existing TeX files to convert. I will be pulling the text out of other documents and putting it into TeXWorks or BBEdit to turn it into LaTeX.
> 
>> There's been a very recent update to biblatex-apa (last few days) so make sure your distribution is up-to-date.
> 
> Mac Tex just updated to … 0.91, but I sense this is not enough?
> 
> If I plug in the sample document (I took out the refs to the bibliography for now) to a new document in TeXWorks
> 
>> \documentclass[noapacite]{apa}
>> \usepackage[american]{babel}
>> \usepackage{csquotes}
>> \usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}
>> \DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
>> \begin{document}
>> 
>> …
>> 
>> 
>> \end{document}
> 
> I get this on a command-T:
> 
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.11 (TeX Live 2010)
> restricted \write18 enabled.
> entering extended mode
> (./apa test.tex
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> l.1 \documentclass
> [noapacite]{apa}
> 
> Also, every time I launch TeXWorks, it defaults to saving in the /Applications/TeX/ folder.
> 

Howdy,

You are trying to compile using pdftex rather than pdflatex.

When I use TeX Live Utility under the Manage Packages tab and search for biblatex I get quite a long list biblatex files including the biblatex-apa package. Are you using a fully updated TL2010?

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)