14

As of today, I have not been able to build any documents using the biblatex-chicago class. MWE follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[nopar]{lipsum} % for dummy text
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage[babel]{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex-chicago}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{Saussure1995,
Author = {Ferdinand de Saussure},
Origyear = {1916},
Publisher = {Payot},
Title = {Cours de Linguistique G{\'e}n{\'e}rale},
Year = {1995}}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]\autocite{Saussure1995}    

\end{document}

Running latexmk -cd -e -f -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode -synctex=1 myfile.tex

produces the following error:

 Undefined control sequence.
\cms@choose ->\ifblx@load@version@one 
                                      nty\else cms\fi 
l.40 \begin{document}

The control sequence at the end of the top line
of your error message was never \def'ed. If you have
misspelled it (e.g., `\hobx'), type `I' and the correct
spelling (e.g., `I\hbox'). Otherwise just continue,
and I'll forget about whatever was undefined.

The MWE works without problems if I substitute biblatex for biblatex-chicago.

Any ideas? Thank you.

moewe
  • 175,683
BorromeanNot
  • 445
  • This compiles fine for me on a TL 2015 system. Have you deleted all your aux files and tried again? What happens when you run the pieces separately, i,e., run pdflatex then biber then pdflatex? – Alan Munn Mar 10 '16 at 23:12
  • Deleting all temp files (including .aux) does not resolve the issue. Running manually breaks at step one (pdflatex), with the same error message. – BorromeanNot Mar 10 '16 at 23:21
  • It seems due to the new biblatex version. :( – egreg Mar 10 '16 at 23:25
  • @egreg Yes, I just updated and now it fails for me too. – Alan Munn Mar 10 '16 at 23:31
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    Please be aware that the new biblatex version has changed the name formatting commands in a way that will cause no errors with biblatex-chicago, but some name definitions will be ignored silently. Do check your output for CMS compliance. – moewe Mar 16 '16 at 10:26
  • Oops... Not what I wanted to hear a few weeks before filing a dissertation, but thanks for the heads up. Is there a repository to download an older version of biblatex from? – BorromeanNot Mar 16 '16 at 20:43

3 Answers3

15

This is caused by a change in the biblatex test for an old system. The previous conditional was called \ifblx@load@version@one and is used in the biblatex-chicago style. The new conditional is called \ifblx@load@version@legacy. You can temporarily solve the problem in the following way by adding the following to your preamble, after loading biblatex.

\makeatletter
\def\cms@choose{cms}
\makeatother

A more general solution is given in Herbert's answer:

\makeatletter
\let\ifblx@load@version@one\ifblx@load@version@legacy
\makeatother

But a long term solution to the problem will be a fix to biblatex-chicago.

Alan Munn
  • 218,180
10

Write into the preamble:

\usepackage{biblatex-chicago}
\makeatletter
\let\ifblx@load@version@one\ifblx@load@version@legacy
\makeatother
4

The biblatex-chicago package has been updated to version 0.9.9h 2016-03-22.

According to the package documentation, this update specifically addresses incompatibilities with biblatex, version 3.3.

The biblatex-chicago package is now available through CTAN: http://www.ctan.org/pkg/biblatex-chicago

Omar
  • 336