I'm trying desperately to learn LaTeX for writing humanities papers. I'm using TeXShop for Mac and I try to produce a biblatex-chicago style document using biber. I've tried to put together templates from various places online and I recently found this question which addressed a problem very similar to mine:
When I try to typeset the file given there, viz.:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[nopar]{lipsum} % for dummy text
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage[babel]{csquotes}
\usepackage[notes,natbib,isbn=false,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}}
@book{Labov1972,
Address = {Philadelphia},
Author = {William Labov},
Publisher = {University of Pennsylvania Press},
Title = {Sociolinguistic Patterns},
Year = {1972}}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]\autocite{Saussure1995}
\lipsum[2]\autocite{Labov1972}
\end{document}
My references don't get processed, but I just get the citation keys (Saussure1995, Labov1972) in the footnotes (at least they are created properly, so I guess the biblatex-chicago is working). The output tells me to:
LaTeX Warning: Writing file `./try.bib'.
(/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/latex/biblatex-chicago/cms-american.lbx (/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/latex/biblatex/lbx/american.lbx (/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/latex/biblatex/lbx/english.lbx))) (./try.aux) No file try.bbl.
LaTeX Warning: Citation 'Saussure1995' on page 1 undefined on input line 26.
LaTeX Warning: Citation 'Labov1972' on page 1 undefined on input line 28.
[1{/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./try.aux)
LaTeX Warning: There were undefined references.
Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file: (biblatex) try (biblatex) and rerun LaTeX afterwards.
And when I run
biber try.tex
(try.tex being the name of the file)
in the terminal, I get:
INFO - This is Biber 0.9.9
INFO - Logfile is 'try.tex.blg'
ERROR - Cannot find control file 'try.tex.bcf'! - did you pass the "backend=biber" option to BibLaTeX?
INFO - ERRORS: 1
I am running Mac OS X Mountain Lion and TeXLive-2012, and I've updated all my packages through TeX Live Utility.
I'd be very grateful for all the help I can get!
biber try.bcf. – jon Aug 11 '12 at 01:36