3

I just updated to biblatex 3.14 and \DeclareBibliographyAlias seems to have stopped working. I was using it to define a new entry type "reprint" and the following mwe worked with biblatex 3.12 and 3.13:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{filecontents*}[overwrite]{\jobname.bib}
@reprint{foo,
    author = {foo, P.~A.},
    title = {foo},
    year = {2000},
}
\end{filecontents*}

\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\DeclareBibliographyAlias{reprint}{customa}

\DeclareBibliographyDriver{reprint}{zzz}

\listfiles

\begin{document}

test

\cite{foo}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Output with biblatex 2018/11/02 v3.12 :

enter image description here

Output with biblatex 2019/12/01 v3.14 :

enter image description here

kaba
  • 195
  • Reading the documentation, the behaviour in the second case is what I'd expect, since you've 'routed' type reprint to the driver for customa. I don't understand what you are trying to achieve with the code. Do you want entries of type reprint to be handled like customa or not? If you do, why declare a driver for reprint at all? If you don't, why make reprint an alias of customa? – cfr Dec 16 '19 at 17:31

1 Answers1

2

Biber 3.14 behaves quite counter-intuitively for unknown entry types, see https://github.com/plk/biber/issues/299: It leaves the entry type empty for unknown types. In the next version of Biber things should be fine again as unknown empty types will just be passed through as-is.

In any case I would argue that the code shown in the MWE was never officially supported.

For one the \DeclareBibliographyAlias{reprint}{customa} is entirely superfluous if it is followed by a \DeclareBibliographyDriver{reprint}{...}. \DeclareBibliographyAlias{reprint}{customa} just tells @reprint entries to use the bibliography driver for @customa entries (which doesn't exist: @customa falls back to the @misc driver). But then \DeclareBibliographyDriver{reprint}{...} defines a driver for @reprint that is used instead.

Secondly, you can only officially use entry types that are defined in the data model. @reprint is not defined in the data model, so using it may lead to undefined behaviour.

If you want to use @reprint as an entry type in its own right, you need to add it to the data model. See How can I create entirely new data types with BibLaTeX/Biber?

\documentclass{article}

\begin{filecontents}{reprint.dbx}
\DeclareDatamodelEntrytypes{reprint}
\DeclareDatamodelEntryfields[reprint]{
  addendum,
  author,
  doi,
  editor,
  editortype,
  eprint,
  eprintclass,
  eprinttype,
  howpublished,
  language,
  location,
  note,
  organization,
  pubstate,
  subtitle,
  title,
  titleaddon,
  type,
  version}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[datamodel=reprint]{biblatex}

\DeclareBibliographyDriver{reprint}{zzz}

\begin{filecontents*}[overwrite]{\jobname.bib}
@reprint{foo,
  author = {foo, P.~A.},
  title = {foo},
  year = {2000},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\cite{foo}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

For a one-off you can remap @reprint to @customa with a sourcemap and then define the driver with \DeclareBibliographyDriver{customa}{...}.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{biblatex}

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map{
      \step[typesource=reprint, typetarget=customa]
    }
  }
}

\DeclareBibliographyDriver{customa}{zzz}

\begin{filecontents*}[overwrite]{\jobname.bib}
@reprint{foo,
  author = {foo, P.~A.},
  title = {foo},
  year = {2000},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\cite{foo}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

For more on \DeclareBibliographyAlias, please have a look at What exactly is the relationship Biblatex refers to as an alias of an entry type? And how should the formatting of aliased entry types be configured?.

I should also note that the code worked in version 3.12 of biblatex (Biber 2.12) but not with earlier versions, since those remapped unknown types to @misc (see https://github.com/plk/biber/issues/242).

moewe
  • 175,683