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My document didn't compile and it took me hours to find the reason. When I finally found it, it was so unrelated to all my previous attempts to solve it and the error messages and warnings didn't give the slightest implication to it. That's why I want to understand the problem better, so I don't run into this issue again.

To reproduce my problem, here is a very simple MWE:

\listfiles 
\documentclass[a4paper]{scrreprt} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[english]{babel} 
\usepackage[babel,german=quotes]{csquotes} 
\usepackage{lipsum} 

\begin{document}
%Fußnote 
\lipsum[1] 
\newpage   
\lipsum[1] 

\end{document}

Important is the Umlaut ß in the word Fußnote in the commented line. If I compile that document in my editor Kile, where QuickBuild is set to PDFLaTex ==> biber ==> PDFLaTex ==> PDFLaTex ==> ViewPDF and biber is defined as in this post, I get the following error:

[biber] finished with exit code 2

As soon as I delete either the umlaut or the biber step in the compiling process, it works. I tried to google that problem but all I found were posts related to Umlauts in the bib-file. I simply don't see why the Umlaut in a comment breaks the compilation because of biber...Where is the connection? Also, note that I don't even load biblatex in this very simple MWE, so biblatex isn't used and doesn't appear in the log-file (if it is still of interest; if I read another log-file correctly, I use biblatex 1.7)

A few more infos (I post as much as I can think of, maybe some stuff is unnecessary, sorry for that; if I miss something, let me know! For instance, the log-file does not contain any warnings, but I can post it if wanted):

  • Kile Version 2.1.3
  • Kile Encoding Setting: UTF-8
  • Ubuntu 13.04

Major edit

Thanks to the great comments, I figured out that the Umlaut isn't the real reason that is going on here (don't know why it solved my original problem). Please find an updated MWE:

\listfiles 
\documentclass[a4paper]{scrreprt} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[english]{babel} 
\usepackage[babel,german=quotes]{csquotes} 
\usepackage{lipsum} 
% \usepackage[ 
%    citestyle=verbose, 
%    labelyear=true, 
%    bibstyle=authoryear, 
%    block=space, 
%    clearlang=true, 
%    backend=biber 
% ]{biblatex}
%\bibliography{\jobname} 

%\DeclareRedundantLanguages{english,german,french}{english,german,ngerman,french} 
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1] 
\newpage   
\lipsum[1] 

\end{document}

This MWE

  • doesn't work if I comment out the call to load biblatex
  • does work if I load biblatex
  • does work if I compile it with biblatex loaded and then comment that out again
  • does not work if I delete the bcf file next.

So my questions come down to this:

  • Why doesn't the compiling work when biblatex isn't loaded, but the biber step is done in the compiling process? Why is there no clear errror message?
  • What's going on here with the bcf files. Why does it work without biblatex loaded, but with a bcf file.

Sorry for the major edit.

Community
  • 1
Christoph_J
  • 151
  • You didn't load the package biblatex. Why do you call biber? There error can related to the case that biber doesn't find any required files. – Marco Daniel Apr 26 '13 at 22:37
  • Thanks for your comment! Based on it, I copied the original MWE to check if it works then (see the 7th post here). Now I am completely confused: I can't reproduce the error consistently! When I replaced my code with this code, the compilation works when I created a new file, but not when I just replace the content of the file. As soon as I compiled it and it worked, I can also replace the content with the one that caused me problems before and it works then. – Christoph_J Apr 26 '13 at 22:57
  • However, if I create a new file with the MWE from my post, it doesn't work...so I have to first use an example that compiles and then I can replace that one with my code from above and it works...Sorry, this sounds really arbitrary, but I haven't found a logic so far behind all of it. – Christoph_J Apr 26 '13 at 22:58
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    You probably have a older bcf-file still around. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 26 '13 at 23:16
  • Thanks, @UlrikeFischer; now this is interesting: when I compile the MWE example from the link mentioned in my previous post, a bcf-file is created...With this file, also my example compiles without error. However, as soon as I delete that bcf file, I get the error again. This is probably also why I can't compile it with a fresh set-up, i.e. if I delete all files and just create a new file with my MWE from above. This still doesn't answer why this is happening? I still don't see why I can only compile the above example if I have such a bcf file in my directory. – Christoph_J Apr 26 '13 at 23:27
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    Use \addbibresource instead \bibliography. Please provide a MWE with a specific bib-entry. – Marco Daniel Apr 27 '13 at 08:39
  • Why? Because biber runs on the biber control file (bcf); the command biber <name> is the same as biber <name>.bcf. This file is created on the first LaTeX run by biblatex. These points are explained in the biblatex manual. – Audrey Apr 27 '13 at 16:08

0 Answers0