1

I've been encouraged to use BibLaTeX, so I'm trying to, but I'm not meeting much success. I'm sure I'm doing something dumb wrong, but I don't know what. I am using TeXShop on a MacBook Pro running OS X Mavericks, if that's relevant.

I compile the following documents by running LaTeX, then BibTeX, then LaTeX twice more:

 \documentclass[]{article} 
 \usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
 \usepackage[
 backend=biber,
 style=authoryear-icomp,
 sortlocale=de_DE,
 natbib=true,
 url=false, 
 doi=true,
 eprint=false ]{biblatex} \addbibresource{bibshort.bib}

 \usepackage[]{hyperref} 
 \hypersetup{colorlinks=true, }

 %% ############################## 
 \begin{document}
 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet~\citep{kastenholz}.
 At vero eos et accusam et \cite{GGK} justo 
 duo dolores et ea rebum~\citet{sigfridsson}. 
 \printbibliography  
 \end{document}

(taken almost verbatim from How to use biber) and

\documentclass{article} 
\bibliographystyle{amsalpha} 
\begin{document}
\autocite{GGK} 
\bibliography{bibshort}{}
\end{document}

The results are as in this image:

two PDFs

The BibTex version is what I want. BibLaTeX version has no bibliography, parentheses instead of the brackets, and for some reason, unwanted spaces.

What have I done wrong?

Community
  • 1
jdc
  • 1,245
  • The first document works, assuming you use biber instead of bibtex. Depending on your editor (assuming TeXshop), you may need to do this from the command line instead of a menu. Alternatively, if you have pdflatexmk in your menu, it will automatically run biber as needed. – Mike Renfro Jan 25 '15 at 02:54
  • The bold thingies and the extra spaces are just because the references are not resolved. It shows bibkeys where bibtex would print question marks (I think). As Mike Renfro says, the problem is that you are telling biblatex that you want biber but you are running bibtex rather than biber. The preferred option is to use biber. Failing that, you can say backend=bibtex but you will lose some functionality that way because biber is a lot more powerful. – cfr Jan 25 '15 at 03:05
  • @Mike Renfro: This is what happens when I run pdflatexmk: http://pastebin.com/hNx3Utyf – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 03:09
  • I see an error message of "biber can't find one or more source files". I know your document with a working .bib file (one I had, since you didn't include one) worked correctly for me. – Mike Renfro Jan 25 '15 at 03:12
  • @cfr: I am not sure how to run biber. There is a spot in Preferences where one can type in a BibTeX Engine (the default is bibtex). When I type biber in instead and try to compile, the console fills very, very slowly, stopping with INFO - Logfile is 'minbib.blg'. Then when I LaTeX again, the resulting document looks the same as before, and the console tells me to run biber again. I seem to be able to iterate this loop without progress. – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 03:14
  • @MikeRenfro: the bib-file is in the same directory for both documents. Why would it not be able to find it anymore? What can I do to appease it? – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 03:15
  • Not sure, and I won't be awake much longer today. You can try running biber from a terminal prompt and looking for error messages, but at least your main document is correct as long as I have a working bib file and associated cite commands. – Mike Renfro Jan 25 '15 at 03:19
  • Thanks for your attempts to help. I will try to figure out how to run things from the terminal. Because the TeXShop interface usually compiles things for one with the press of a button, I've never picked up this very basic skill. – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 03:33
  • You can say backend=bibtex and get some of the benefits of biblatex without biber. But biber is definitely the way to go. – cfr Jan 25 '15 at 03:36
  • I am truly trying to go this better way. My limited skillset is just defeating me a bit. – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 03:38
  • 1
    I don't know TeXShop, but what about this answer? – jon Jan 25 '15 at 04:19
  • @jon: putting that in the preamble does (!) make it try to run biber (which for some reason shows a blank console for 15 seconds before it outputs anything). When I do LaTeX, BibTeX (repaced with biber) and LaTeX again, though, the output looks the same as before. The logs look similar too. Here's what the biber log looks like: http://pastebin.com/aKEw30At – jdc Jan 25 '15 at 04:39
  • Hmm, if you want to test biber itself, you need to work from the command line. You can grab the two test files from here, put them in a directory and run biber from the same directory as follows: biber --validate_control --convert_control test – jon Jan 25 '15 at 04:51
  • 1
    Note that biber and biblatex versions need to match. It looks like you have version 1.6 of biber; that means you need to be using version 2.6 of biblatex (checkable by adding \listfiles to your .tex file, running latex, then looking at the list of files appended to the end of the .log file). – jon Jan 25 '15 at 04:53
  • 3
    It is probably best to make sure both Biber and biblatex are up to date (and that their versions match; the newest is 1.9 for Biber and 2.9a for biblatex). Then you should read this and clear Biber's cache. (It is normal for Biber to take some time on a first run, just wait for it to complete and don't abort it by starting another compilation process.) – moewe Jan 25 '15 at 08:06
  • @jon: It returns the following: INFO - This is Biber 1.6 INFO - Logfile is 'test.blg' data source /var/folders/3p/cg9lvncx72v5jjjvkz16x1n40000gn/T/par-6a6566667265796361726c736f6e/cache-955b5cd96386991ca6623279060097e4c757d28e/inc/lib/Biber/LaTeX/recode_data.xml not found in . – jdc Jan 27 '15 at 00:43
  • 1
    @jdc We would need to know your biblatex version (which you could check by opening the file pointed to by kpsewhich biblatex.pdf and read off the version there, or by compiling a file with \usepackage{biblatex} with \listfiles at the beginning and looking at the .log). For Biber 1.6 you need biblatex 2.6 - note though that both versions are outdated, 1.9/2.9a are the current versions. The message you get, though, very, very much suggests a broken Biber cache (this can be fixed as described here). – moewe Jan 27 '15 at 08:36
  • It says that my biblatex version is 2.6, which I guess is "good." How do I update the versions? (I tried opening TeX Live Utility, and it told me my TeX Live version is 2013 and is incompatible with the repository, and that I had about a thousand things I should update. (Then it opened Firefox, then crashed).) – jdc Jan 27 '15 at 20:24
  • @moewe: Okay, I restarted it and followed the prompts and entered my admin password a lot and updated biblatex and biber and entered the mysterious search-and-clear-cache command from the Alan Munn question and put in the % !BIB TS-program = biber code from @jon's answer, and it compiled and gave me a bibliography! Thank you all so much! – jdc Jan 27 '15 at 20:45
  • In this case, I think it is appropriate to close this question as a duplicate of the one I linked to above. – moewe Jan 28 '15 at 06:46
  • In "fairness" to me, I didn't have the sophistication to realize this was the core issue, but yes, absolutely. – jdc Jan 29 '15 at 13:05

0 Answers0