[XeTeX] biblatex with xelatex

[Alex Hamann]

Thanks for all replies. 
I ended up installing biber and I am pleased that the project has made clear progress since I checked it out last time. Goodbye bibtex, then.

Cheers,

Alex


On 14.12.2009, at 10:14, Ulrike Fischer wrote:

> Am Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:47:16 +0100 schrieb Alex Hamann:
> 
>> Hi,
> 
>> I am used to encoding my bib-files and tex-files in utf-8 and
>> typesetting them with xelatex. While skimming through the
>> biblatex documentation I ran into a paragraph under section 2.4.3
>> (p. 36):
> 
>> Using UTF-8 encoding in both the tex and the bib file is not
>> possible since neither traditional BibTeX nor bibtex8 can handle
>> multi-byte encodings such as UTF-8. In this case, you need to use
>> a single-byte encoding such as Latin 1 (see above) or resort to
>> Ascii notation in the bib file: \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>> \usepackage{biblatex} 
> 
> 
>> I never saw any problems resulting from the use of utf-8 in both
>> files and am now curious to understand why I should avoid doing
>> this. Is the limitation something that becomes irrelevant when
>> using xelatex (xelatex is not mentioned in the documentation)?
> 
> Well bibtex8 is 8-bit orientated: It divides the input file (the
> bib) in 8-bit-pieces (octets) and process this pieces. As you
> experienced this is in general not a problem, but if your bib
> contains utf8-chars encoded with 2 or more octets it is possible
> that bibtex8 splits such a char e.g. by inserting in the middle of
> an utf8-char a newline char. And this could lead to a corrupt (non
> utf-8 encoded) .bbl. 
> 
> 
> You could try biber as replacement
> http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ulrike Fischer 
>