How to use biber

Question

Simply put I want to know what steps I need to take to start biber with biblatex. I haven't been able to find any proper tutorials or guides showing how you go about using it instead of BibTeX.

• What is biber's syntax?
• How do you compile?
• Etc.

Are there any tutorials or guides available?

Answer 1

Here is a MWE (not really minimum, but showing some options) that should get you started. Other possible values for the biblatex options are described in the biblatex documentation.

\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[
    backend=biber,
    style=authoryear-icomp,
    sortlocale=de_DE,
    natbib=true,
    url=false, 
    doi=true,
    eprint=false
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
    colorlinks=true,
}
%% ##############################
\begin{document}
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet~\citep{kastenholz}.
    At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum~\citet{sigfridsson}.
    \printbibliography 
\end{document}

To compile you should now call pdflatex, biber, pdflatex.
biber operates on the .bcf file, so either use biber %.bcf or (even better) just biber %, where % stands for the basename of your main .tex file.

biblatex-examples.bib is a file that comes with your TeX distribution, you can find it at TEXMF/bibtex/bib/biblatex.biblatex-examples.bibor online. It can be used for testing. Use a different filename for your own .bib file.

The natbib=true option allows you to use citep and citet style citations in you text. This is mainly for compatibility with old code. For new code, use \textcite{} and \parencite{} instead. biblatex knows some more cite commands like \autocite{} or \footcite{}. These are described in the biblatex documentation.

Answer 2

run texdoc biber from the command line and you'll get the documentation. However, using biber as a replacement for bibtex you have to define the backend with

\usepackage[backend=biber,...]{biblatex}

and then change your bibtex run into a biber one, that is all.

However, with the latest biblatex package (TeXLive 2016) the backend=biber setting is the default, you have only to specify bibtex or bibtex8 if you want to use one of the old programs. And, of course, you have to change the program name in your editor. For example: in TeXstudio it is Options->Configure->Build->Standard Bibprogram->biber.

Answer 3

I took the biblatex.pdf and read my way through and it is well organized!

You must set a customer-defined command (analog to how I had to set makeglossaries.exe) but with biber(.sh/.exe), which should be installed in your LaTeX manager.

I had to add this to the custom commands so biber is found properly.

"path/to/biber(.sh/.exe)" %

Especially interesting is

1.5 Prerequisites

• tells you what packages you need and in which order to load the dependencies
• apparently depending on the biblatex version you might need another biber version

3.1 Package Options

• what settings can I apply

3.14.1 Overview

• step-by-step example with code snippet how to use biber

See @matth's post for example syntax In the end you build

• (I recommend to clean aux files when running stuff like that)
• pdflatex %
• biber %
• pdflatex %