Can somebody tell me what's wrong with this use of biblatex?

Question

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=numeric, citestyle=numeric]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{PTP.bib}
\usepackage[UKenglish]{babel}

\begin{document}
\title{Progress Through Paradox}
\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
 mechanical development came, in equal measure, responses seeking to disprove 
them, as was the formulation of the 'EPR Paradox' in response to Heisenberg and 
Bohr's 'Copenhagen Interpretation' understanding of quantum mechanical variables 
(in particular their uncertainties)\cite{Copenhagen}, 

\printbibliography
\end{document}

The file does work without the \printbibliography command, when present I get the error:

LaTeX Warning: No \author given.

! Undefined control sequence. zeitschrift f\x {fffd}\x {fffd}r physik; magazine for physics l.14 \end {document}

This leads me to believe there is an issue with my .bib file, which I cannot find:

% Encoding: UTF-8

@Book{QP,
  title     = {Quantum Paradoxes},
  publisher = {WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH \& Co. KGaA},
  year      = {2005},
  author    = {Yakir Aharonov; Daniel Rohrlich},
  editor    = {Yakir Aharonov; Daniel Rohrlich},
  volume    = {25},
  edition   = {3},
  isbn      = {978-3-527-40391-2},
}

@Article{Copenhagen,
  author  = {Werner Heisenberg},
  title   = {ber den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik 
und Mechanik; The content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics},
  journal = {zeitschrift für physik; magazine for physics},
  year    = {1927},
  volume  = {43},
  number  = {3-4},
  pages   = {172-198},
}

@Article{EPR,
  author  = {Albert Einstein; Boris Podolsky; Nathan Rosen},
   title   = {Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality Be Considered 
Complete?},
  journal = {Description of Physical Reality},
  year    = {1935},
  volume  = {47},
  pages   = {777-780},
}    

@Article{Bell,
  author  = {John Bell},
  title   = {ON THE EINSTEIN PODOLSKY ROSEN PARADOX},
  journal = {Physics},
  year    = {1964},
 volume  = {1[I]},
  pages   = {195-200},
}

   @Article{BohmEPR,
      author  = {David Bohm; Yakir Aharonov},
      title   = {Discussion of Experimental Proof for the Paradox of 
Einstein, 
    Rosen, and Podolsky},
      journal = {PHYSICAL REVIEW},
      year    = {1957},
      volume  = {108},
      pages   = {1070-1076},
    }

@Misc{BellMath,
  author       = {Mathpages},
     title        = {Quantum Entanglement and Bell's Theorem},
      howpublished = {Web Page},
      note         = 
{URL:http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath521/kmath521.htm},
      url          = {http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath521/kmath521.htm},
   }

    @Article{ABeffect,
     author  = {Yakir Aharonov; David Bohm},
      title   = {Significance of electromagnetic potentials in quantum 
theory},
     journal = {Physical Review},
     year    = {1959},
     volume  = {115},
     pages   = {485-491},
   }

     @Book{State,
      title     = {Quantum Mechanics},
      publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons. Inc},
      year      = {1977},
      author    = {Claude Cohen-Tannoudji; Bernard Diu; Franck Laloe},
      editor    = {Claude Cohen-Tannoudji; Bernard Diu; Franck Laloe},
      isbn      = {0-471-16433-X},
    }

@Comment{jabref-meta: databaseType:bibtex;}

Have you tried renaming your file so that it has no spaces and using it without spaces in your file? Spaces are evil... — TeXnician, Jan 04 '18 at 16:25
For biblatex, you need \addbibresource, not \bibliography. See Is there any advantage to using \addbibresource over \bibliography? — Werner, Jan 04 '18 at 16:28
Can you be a bit more specific? Are there error messages or warnings in the log files? If so, what are they? — Ian Thompson, Jan 04 '18 at 16:51
can you please change the question to say biblatex rather than bibtex (which isn't used). the tagging is correct, but the title is misleading. (i could change it, but figure it would mean more to you if you do it yourself.) — barbara beeton, Jan 04 '18 at 16:55
@I.Auguste: Have you included biber in your processing sequence? That is, pdflatex > biber > pdflatex > pdflatex? — Werner, Jan 04 '18 at 17:01
You have to run biber on your tex file and then again pdflatex — , Jan 04 '18 at 17:01
I did not, upon running biber I recived the error: ERROR - Cannot find control file 'Quantum Paradoxes.bcf'! - did you pass the "backend=biber" option to BibLaTeX? — I.Auguste, Jan 04 '18 at 17:04
@I.Auguste: Perhaps you should read the following: What to do to switch to biblatex? (if you're used to other citation packages); biblatex in a nutshell (for beginners) — Werner, Jan 04 '18 at 17:13
I have read that but fail to see any discrepency between my document and the given format of: `\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex} \bibliography{<database>} % or

%
\addbibresource{.}
\begin{document}
\cite{} \printbibliography \end{document` — I.Auguste, Jan 04 '18 at 17:15
@I.Auguste: I have no problems with this setup, which creates this output. Compiled with pdflatex > biber > pdflatex > pdflatex. — Werner, Jan 04 '18 at 17:29
@Werner I've found that running this system as you said works but only without \printbibliography, it seems there is a problem with my .bib file, I recieve the error (all entries have an author): LaTeX Warning: No \author given.
! Undefined control sequence. zeitschrift f\x {fffd}\x {fffd}r physik; magazine for physics l.14 \end {document} — I.Auguste, Jan 04 '18 at 17:44
For the authors in the bib file use Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm and not a comma separeted list — , Jan 04 '18 at 18:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 04 '18 at 18:00

1

For the error concerning the misbehaving bibliography I needed to run through Biber as follows: pdflatex > biber > pdflatex > pdflatex

without BibTex or MikTex running and without the \printbibliography commands, which can be added later instead

for the error concerning printing my bibliography I had square brackets and German within a title and Biblatex didn't like that

answered Jan 04 '18 at 18:00

I.Auguste

125

See also Question mark or bold citation key instead of citation number and Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations. Square brackets are fine. And German would also be fine if it were not for umlauts. TeX can only deal with non-ASCII chars if you explicitly tell it what to do with them. The ü is a problem. Load the inputenc and fontspec packages - or use XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX. – moewe Jan 04 '18 at 22:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '18 at 22:28

The problem is not exactly in your bibliography-file but in the way biblatex is called in your document.
Since your bibliography is encoded in UTF-8 and you use non-English charakters like "ü" in "Zeitschrift für Physik", you should also envoke biblatex with the option bibencoding=utf8.

Here is the MWE working for me with your PTP.bib:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,bibencoding=utf8,style=numeric,citestyle=numeric]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{PTP.bib}

\begin{document}
\title{Progress Through Paradox}
\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
 mechanical development came, in equal measure, responses seeking to disprove 
them, as was the formulation of the 'EPR Paradox' in response to Heisenberg and 
Bohr's 'Copenhagen Interpretation' understanding of quantum mechanical variables 
(in particular their uncertainties)\cite{Copenhagen}, 

\printbibliography
\end{document}

But please also consider the comments about correct author naming in .bib-files (AUTHOR1 and AUTHOR2 instead of AUTHOR1; AUTHOR2). bib(la)tex is very sensitive in regard to special characters within field values, in some contexts the names won't be printed correctly.

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 04 '18 at 19:36

-1

I rund the same code in my actual homework, but with backend=bibtex. Works under the same routine in Texworks. Sometimes I have problems running biber on a Mac. Some of my friends do use biber, but I do prefer bibtex.

answered Jan 04 '18 at 19:36

Christoph

51

1

The program "bibtex" is a pain! It makes no difference running biber on Linus/Windows/Mac. With biber I can have a title Crème brûlêe in the bibfile. Compare it with the entry for bibtex ... – Jan 04 '18 at 19:50

Can somebody tell me what's wrong with this use of biblatex?

3 Answers3