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+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 3.4
+
+* Biber version 2.5 is required for biblatex 3.4
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - There have been major changes to the support for
+ bibtex as a backend. In order to facilitate future development, the
+ bibtex and biber code paths have been merged and bibtex as a biblatex
+ backend is now officially deprecated with a view to discontinued support
+ in a future release. bibtex as a backend will still work currently with a
+ reduced feature set. Of particular note are the labelprefix (formerly
+ prefixnumbers) option and support for shorthand lists, neither of which
+ will work with the bibtex backend any longer as it was deemed too
+ difficult to maintain support for these with merged backend code paths.
+ Please switch to using biber to use these features. The documentation no
+ longer mentioned biber/bibtex specific features and should be taken as
+ referring to biber features with limited fallback support for bibtex.
+* A new data annotations feature is available which allows attachment of
+ semantic annotation markers to bibliographic data. Macros are provided
+ for accessing the annotations during formatting. This allows, for
+ example, highlighting of particular names in a name list without putting
+ markup in the data. See the main documentation for details.
+* There is a new per-entry option "noinherit" which allows fine-grained
+ blocking of data inheritance declared with \DeclareDataInheritance. See
+ the docs for \DeclareDataInheritance.
+* A new context-sensitive delimiter interface (\DeclareDelimFormat) is now
+ available. This is able to vary a delimiter based on where it occurs (in a
+ citation, in a bib item etc.) A new sample file (04-delimiters) demonstrates the
+ interface and how it interacts with the basic static delimiter definition interface.
+* Arbitrary sets of data fields can now be defined with
+ \DeclareDatafieldSet. Such sets are now used to determine behaviour in
+ various places - search the PDF doc for mention of this macro.
+ Users/style authors can define their own sets of fields and access them
+ with automatically generated etoolbox list macros.
+* Transliteration support during sorting is now possible via
+ \DeclareSortTranslit. This is useful for sorting languages which are not
+ directly supported by the UCA+CLDR. The only currently supported
+ transliteration is for Sanskrit (IAST romanisation->Devanāgarī). Please
+ open a github ticket if you think you require any other transliterations.
+* The \ifempty macro for testing namepart emptiness introduced in 3.3 was a
+ mistake. If you used this, please use \ifdefvoid instead - this is standard etoolbox.
+* The "prefixnumbers" option has been renamed to "labelprefix" since it is
+ not specific to numeric styles and may be used with alpha label styles
+ too. Since this option can change citation labels, which are not
+ contained in a bibliography list, it is no longer an option of
+ \printbibliography and is now an option of reference contexts. This makes
+ certain things now possible such as citing the same entry from different
+ bibliographies with different prefices.
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - The internal field "prefixnumber" is now called
+ "labelprefix" as the name was a legacy of originally only applying to
+ numeric styles. If you refer to this field in your style, please change it.
+ Using the field "prefixnumber" will issue a deprecation warning
+* With biber, for fields of datatype "date" in the datamodel, the internal
+ macros, package options and datepart fields are automatically created.
+ This makes defining custom date fields easier.
+* The \nameparts macro inside \DeclareNameFormat is no longer necessary.
+ Name part macros will be automatically populated and \nameparts will be
+ ignored if found.
+* Bugfixes
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 3.3
+
+* Biber version 2.4 is required for biblatex 3.3
+* The \Declare*Option commands have a new optional argument when using
+ biber which declares the datatype of the option. It defaults to
+ "boolean" if not specified. If you define any custom options in your
+ style, you may want to specify the correct datatype (see docs). However,
+ it is unlikely that this will impact anything at the moment as this option
+ only used internally by biber for some checks.
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - There have been major changes to the handling of
+ name lists in order to generalise name handling beyond the narrow
+ confines of the legacy bibtex name parts of "last, first, prefix,
+ suffix". These changes only apply when using biber as the backend and
+ mainly affect style authors.
+ * In general in macro names, "first" is now "given" and "last" is now "family":
+
+ The option "firstinits" has been renamed to "giveninits" and the option "sortfirstinits"
+ to "sortgiveninits". The old names are available as legacy aliases.
+ Style authors using the internal toggles associated with these options will
+ need to change "first" to "given" in their names.
+
+ Name formats and the \mkbibname* macros have been internally renamed by
+ replacing "first" with "given" and "last" with "family". There are aliases in place for the
+ older names. Please use the new names in any custom styles.
+
+ * The most significant change concerns the definition of name formats.
+ Style authors will need to update any styles which use
+ \DeclareNameFormat or \DeclareIndexNameFormat which no longer accept
+ 8 arguments which are hard coded to the nameparts which bibtex
+ understands. These macros now take one argument which is a
+ comma-separated list which must be parsed with:
+
+ \nameparts{#1}%
+
+ All name formats should include this line, usually as the first line in
+ the format. Valid nameparts are now defined by the datamodel and the
+ default is compatible with standard bibtex with "last" renamed to
+ "family" and "first" renamed to "given". The default datamodel
+ declaration is:
+
+ \DeclareDatamodelConstant[type=list]{nameparts}{prefix,family,suffix,given}
+
+ This declaration automatically creates the \mkbibname<namepart> macros and the
+ internal machinery for the \nameparts macro. After using the \nameparts macro
+ as described above, each namepart will be available in two macros with
+ the following name structure:
+
+ \namepart<namepart>
+ \namepart<namepart>i
+
+ The macro ending in "i" is the macro contain the namepart initials.
+ So, use of \nameparts{#1} in the default datamodel will result in these
+ macros being defined for use:
+
+ \namepartprefix
+ \namepartprefixi
+ \namepartfamily
+ \namepartfamilyi
+ \namepartsuffix
+ \namepartsuffixi
+ \namepartgiven
+ \namepartgiveni
+
+ As a further example, the name format:
+
+ \DeclareNameFormat{first-last}{%
+ \iffirstinits
+ {\usebibmacro{name:first-last}{#1}{#4}{#5}{#7}}
+ {\usebibmacro{name:first-last}{#1}{#3}{#5}{#7}}%
+ \usebibmacro{name:andothers}}
+
+ is now:
+
+ \DeclareNameAlias{first-last}{given-family}% legacy alias
+ \DeclareNameFormat{given-family}{%
+ \nameparts{#1}%
+ \ifgiveninits
+ {\usebibmacro{name:given-family}
+ {\namepartfamily}
+ {\namepartgiveni}
+ {\namepartprefix}
+ {\namepartsuffix}}
+ {\usebibmacro{name:given-family}
+ {\namepartfamily}
+ {\namepartgiven}
+ {\namepartprefix}
+ {\namepartsuffix}}%
+ \usebibmacro{name:andothers}}
+
+ See the example 93-nameparts.tex example file for an example of
+ defining and using a custom namepart, which is now possible due to
+ these changes.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 3.2
+
+* Biber version 2.3 is required for biblatex 3.2
+* New label generation options which allow fine-tuning of how name prefices
+ are handled (see pstrwidth and pcompound options in documentation).
+* Some internals have changed regarding prefix space handling in names.
+ This shouldn't impact normal users but hackers please not that
+ \blx@sf@apo has been renamed to \blx@sf@prefixchar to better suit the new
+ \DeclarePrefChars command. Also note that in the standard name printing
+ macros, \ifpunctmark{'} has been replaced by the more general \ifprefchar.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 3.1
+
+* Biber version 2.2 is required for biblatex 3.1
+* Added new macros \DeclareNolabel and \DeclareNolabelwidthcount for fine-tuning label generation
+* Improved Finnish and Russian localisation
+* Many bug fixes
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 3.0
+
+* Biber version 2.0 is required for biblatex 3.0
+* A new reference context mechanism to allow for future extensions has been
+ introduced. Effectively, this means the following. The 'sorting' option to
+ \printbibliography and \printbiblist is deprecated. You should use the
+ 'sorting' option to \newrefcontext or the
+ \begin{refcontext}\end{refcontext} environment. This allows the sorting
+ list context wider scope over citations etc. too. For example, some
+ information in citations like extrayear depends on the sort list order
+ but until this version, citation sorting was always determined by the
+ global sorting specification. Therefore it was not too difficult to get
+ into a situation where citations were incorrect for a bibliography list
+ with a defined sorting scheme:
+
+ \usepackage[sorting=nty]{biblatex}
+ \cite{test1}
+ \cite{test2}
+ \printbibliography[sorting=nyt]
+
+ In this case, the citation labels may not match the bibliography
+ because the data used to generate the citations are drawn from a
+ different sort list. This was a general issue that entry data was
+ assumed to be the same over all bibliography lists. Only the order of
+ entries was assumed to be different, which is incorrect. The order of
+ items in a bibliography list can impact the actual data contents of
+ items in the case of things like the extra* fields. Now, the above can
+ be solved using the new refcontext mechanism which exposes the sorting
+ context to biblatex:
+
+ \usepackage[sorting=nty]{biblatex}
+ \newrefcontext[sorting=nyt]
+ \cite{test1}
+ \cite{test2}
+ \printbibliography
+
+ In this case, the \cite commands pull their data from the "nyt" sorting
+ list data which is also used by the following \printbibliography
+ This is all for biber only.
+* labelname and labeltitle are now instantiated by biblatex dynamically at
+ output time. Prior to this release, labelname and labeltitle were
+ statically instantiated by biber and put into the .bbl. This does not allow
+ for context-sensitive labelname/labeltitle determination which is
+ foreseen in future extensions.
+* New "pernottype" and "entryclone" sourcemapping verbs allow for negated
+ matches on entry types and the cloning of entries respectively. Requires
+ biber.
+* Biber now calculates the length of ranges (like page ranges) so that the
+ various range-length tests are far more accurate. See the "frangelen"
+ field documentation. This is very robust and can deal with roman numerals
+ in just about all of their Unicode and ASCII forms.
+* When a bibliography field is declared as a "name" field in the data
+ model, all options and counters to decide whether to use it or not are
+ automatically created. This effectively extends the existing "useauthor"
+ and "useeditor" options to all data model name fields automatically. These
+ options are now just special cases of the general data model name
+ handling mechanism.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.9a
+
+* Biber version 1.9 is required for biblatex 2.9a
+* Fixed some bugs with defernumbers option
+* With biber, the scanner for \mkcomprange will normalise any sequence of
+ dashes with \bibrangedash and any (optionally space-surrounded) comma or
+ semi-colon with \bibrangessep (see docs). Range compression now works
+ properly in citation notes.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.9
+
+* Biber version 1.9 is required for biblatex 2.9
+* With biber, the \printshorthands functionality is subsumed under a more
+ general "bibliography list" functionality. See the documentation for
+ \printbiblist and the new examples file "92-bibliographylists.tex".
+ Previous list of shorthands macros have legacy aliases for backwards
+ compatibility.
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - The generalisation of the \printshorthands facility
+ into a bibliography list printing facility necessitated changing the
+ default bibliography environment name for printing shorthands from
+ "shorthands" to "shorthand" so that it matches the field name it uses.
+ This allows the other relevant "short*" fields to be automatically
+ available with environments, filters etc. for building bibliography lists
+ of abbreviations. The same applies to the default "shorthands" driver
+ which is now called "shorthand". If you (re)define either the "shorthands"
+ bibliography environment or the "shorthands" driver in your style, please
+ change the names to remove the "s" or you will pick up the internal
+ defaults instead.
+* The data model defining macros are no longer valid in a document
+ (including the preamble). They in fact only ever partially worked as
+ biblatex uses the data model to define some internal macros before the
+ preamble and document is read. Using these macros in a document would
+ lead to strange behaviour sooner or later and so now they are disabled
+ after the data model is loaded and will generate a warning.
+* The "sortlocale" option no longer passes its value to the biber option of
+ the same name. Biblatex now has its own "sortlocale" option which is used
+ to set the global sorting locale on sorting specifications which don't
+ define one. The ability to define sorting locales per-sortscheme is new
+ in this version. See the PDF documentation. This is unlikely to impact
+ anyone. The biber "sortlocale" option can be use to override the
+ biblatex-specified sorting locales if you need to.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.8a
+
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - The "language" option has new values. "language=autobib" changes
+ language for bibliography entries based on the LANGID field and the "autolang" option setting.
+ As a new feature, "language=autocite" does the same for citations. "language=auto" sets
+ both "autocite" and "autobib" and the default is "lanauge=autobib". This is a change from
+ the previous default. If your style sets "language=auto" explicitly, you will get the new
+ citation language switching behaviour and might want to use "language=autobib" to get the old
+ behaviour back.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.8
+
+* Biber version 1.8 is required for biblatex 2.8
+* Polyglossia is now better supported
+* The HYPHENATION field is now called LANGID. The old name still works for backwards compat. This
+ field does a lot more than just selecting hyphenation patterns and was misleading.
+* New field LANGIDOPTS for Polyglossia users allows specification of
+ language-specific options (like variants such as "american" english and
+ babelshorthands etc.). See the biblatex-examples.bib file which has been
+ converted to use the new field names and fields.
+* "babel" option renamed to "autolang". Old name generates a warning but
+ still works. Since Polyglossia support now basically works, this name is now
+ too package specific. There is a new value "langname" for this option
+ which is Polyglossia only and allows the use of the main polyglossia language
+ switching environment which can use the options given in the LANGIDOPTS field.
+* New value "year" for "datelabel" option
+* New internal field "datelabelsource" for package authors specifies which
+ date field the datelabel was generated from.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.7a
+
+* Bugfix release for 2.7
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.7
+
+* Biber version 1.7 is required for biblatex 2.7
+
+* New field EVENTTITLEADDON now part of default data model and default styles
+
+* Many citation command enhancements, better flow-of-text integration for
+ \textcite et al. See changelog in PDF doc for details.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.6
+
+* Biber version 1.6 is required for biblatex 2.6
+
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - \DeclareLabelyear is now \DeclareLabeldate so
+ that the extra fields labelmonth and labelday can be generated by
+ biber. The 'labelyear' package option is now called 'labeldate'. The
+ old names will work but will generate warnings. The default
+ definition for \DeclareLabeldate in biblatex.def results in the same
+ behaviour as with the old \DeclareLabelyear.
+
+* Localised and fixed string fallbacks now possible as values for labelyear field
+
+* Cyclic and cascading RELATED entries now working properly.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.5
+
+* Biber version 1.5 is required for biblatex 2.5
+
+* New sourcemap step "entrynull" can be used to completely skip an entry.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.4
+
+* Biber version 1.4 is required for biblatex 2.4
+
+* New macro \DeclareStyleSourcemap for style authors who want to define source mappings which
+ are not changed by users using \DeclareSourcemap. Style maps so defined are run after user
+ mappings and before driver default mappings.
+
+* New RELATEDOPTIONS field giving more control over the exact options for related entry processing
+
+* INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE - \DeclareLabelname, \DeclareLabelTitle and \DeclareLabelyear now have
+ a different syntax in order to prepare for future multi-script support. The change is minor -
+ just wrap all fields in \field{} and don't use any commas to separate fields. For example, the
+ default definition of \DeclareLabelname was:
+
+ \DeclareLabelname{%
+ shortauthor,
+ author,
+ shorteditor,
+ editor,
+ translator}
+
+ and is now:
+
+ \DeclareLabelname{%
+ \field{shortauthor}
+ \field{author}
+ \field{shorteditor}
+ \field{editor}
+ \field{translator}
+ }
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.3
+
+* Biber version 1.3 is required for biblatex 2.3
+
+* New "append" mode for \DeclareSourcemap so that fields can be combined
+
+* Detection of some situations which requires biber or latex reruns.
+ Specifically, when sorting schemes are added or removed, when citations are added
+ or removed, when sorting=none and citation order changes and the interactions of
+ these situations when defernumbers=true. Biblatex should now report that a re-run is
+ required in such situations.
+
+* Bugfixes
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.2
+
+* Biber version 1.2 is required for biblatex 2.2
+
+* Bugfixes
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.1
+
+* Biber version 1.1 is required for biblatex 2.1
+
+* Custom data models is now looked for in more places. See PDF
+ documentation. Custom data model conflicts are now better processed by
+ biber.
+
+* Some improved localisation (Norwegian) and doc fixes.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 2.0
+
+* Biber is now the default backend. Biblatex 2.0 requires biber
+ 1.0. It will not work with any earlier release of biber due to
+ .bcf format changes required to support the new list-local sorting
+ feature.
+
+* Biblatex with bibtex as the backend is now frozen at version 1.7. When
+ using biblatex with the option "backend=bibtex" (which must be
+ specified now, the default is backend=biber if no option is specified),
+ biblatex 1.7 will be automatically used. Apart from important bug fixes,
+ no more development will be done on the 1.7 branch which means that
+ users must switch to backend=biber (or don't specify the backend at all)
+ to get version 2.0 and future new features. All major new 2.0 features
+ require biber anyway so this is no real change for bibtex users.
+
+* New options to enable counters which track different combinations of
+ information. Here is a summary which contains all tracking options,
+ including the new ones (row marked with with a star, table is also in
+ the PDF documentation):
+
+ Enabled Enabled Tracked
+ Option field counter information
+ -------------- ---------- -------------- -------------------
+ labelalpha labelalpha extraalpha label
+ labelyear labelyear extrayear labelname+labelyear
+ *labeltitle --- extratitle labelname+labeltitle
+ *labeltitleyear --- extratitleyear labeltitle+labelyear
+
+ The naming of the options and counters is a little unintuitive because
+ the original ones were named before requests for the new ones were made.
+ The "Tracked information" column makes clear which information is tracked
+ by the counters. The new counters will appear in the .bbl inside an entry
+ and can be used just like "extraalpha" and "extrayear". The new options
+ controlling the new counters are false by default and are not used by the
+ standard styles.
+
+* The biblatex data model is now customisable using the \DeclareDatamodel*
+ macros. This allows the use of new entrytypes and fields, as long as the
+ style supports them.
+
+* Controlling initials generation
+
+ A biblatex macro interface (\DeclareNoinit) is now available to declare
+ regular expressions to strip from names before generating initials for
+ them. This mirrors the Biber config file functionality on a per-document
+ basis. A common use, for example, might be to strip certain prefices
+ from names so that they do not end up as initials.
+
+* Fine tuning sorting strings
+
+ A biblatex macro interface (\DeclareNosort) is now available to declare
+ regular expressions to strip from fields or types of fields for sorting
+ purposes. This mirrors the Biber config file functionality on a per-document
+ basis. A common use, for example, might be to strip "The " from titles for
+ sorting purposes.
+
+* Sorting option for bibliography/shorthand lists
+
+ \printbibliography and \printshorthands now have a "sorting" option so
+ you can choose a sorting scheme for each bibliography/shorthand list
+ instead of using the global sorting scheme. This means that you can
+ issue \printbibliography or \printshorthands as many times as you need
+ to, anywhere in the document and have the resulting list sorted in the
+ way required.
+
+* Dynamic datasource modification
+
+ A biblatex macro interface (\DeclareSourcemap) is now available to
+ allow users to dynamically modify data as it is read by Biber. This
+ can be used to do many things like remove unwanted fields,
+ regularise field contents, add new fields etc. all without write
+ access to the datasource. The biblatex manual has a large section
+ on this feature, with many examples. This feature is identical in
+ functionality to Biber's "sourcemap" option but having a macro
+ interface allows it to be used on a per-document basis. The default
+ mappings for datasource drivers are definable too, using
+ \DeclareDefaultSourcemap
+
+* Customisable labels
+
+ A new macro interface is implemented (\DeclareLabelalphaTemplate)
+ which allows customisation of the label used in alphanumeric
+ styles. The previous static labels are now implemented in terms of
+ the new interface. The biblatex manual has a section on this
+ feature with examples. One edge-case has changed with the new
+ definition of the previous default label generation behaviour: a
+ name with a prefix will now include 3 characters after the prefix
+ instead of 2 ("van Rompel" will be "vRom" instead of "vRo"). The
+ previous behaviour was anomolous anyway. There are options to
+ auto-disambiguate labels in several ways.
+
+* Related entries
+
+ A general method to support "related entries" is implemented. This
+ allows a localisable, flexible way to deal with relationships between
+ entries like "reprint of", "translation of", "reprinted in" etc.
+
+ Three new entry fields are available to support this - "related",
+ "relatedtype" and "relatedstring". Biber will automatically create
+ "dataonly" clones of the related entries so that their data can be
+ accessed in styles without having to cite them. Related entries may
+ also be cited themselves which does not interfere in any way with this
+ mechanism. The standard styles have been updated to support the new
+ fields. New punctuation macros are available to format the new fields
+ in the bibliography ("relatedpunct", "relateddelim", "related").
+
+* Citation key aliases
+
+ It is now possible to include a new field "ids" in an entry which
+ is a comma-separated list of citation key aliases. The entry can be
+ cited by any of the aliases, which helps when you updated your
+ entry keys but don't want to change old documents.
+
+* Option to sort names only using initials
+
+ The new option "sortfirstinits" allows users to specify that name
+ sorting only uses initials instead of the full name. Previously,
+ even if "firstinits" was true, sorting used full names.
+
+* New citation commands
+
+ Starred variants of \citeyear and \citedate are now available which
+ include the extrayear information.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.7
+
+* Biber update, new features
+
+ Biblatex 1.7 requires Biber 0.9.6. Biber is now based on Perl 5.14
+ with full Unicode 6.0 support. There's a bunch of other
+ improvements -- see the Biber manual for details.
+
+* XDATA containers [Biber only]
+
+ This release introduces the new @xdata entry type and the
+ corresponding xdata field. Essentially, the idea is that you can
+ dump frequently used data into an @xdata entry and reference that
+ where needed. It's a bit like crossref but doesn't imply any
+ logical (parent/child) relation. Or, to put it differently, it's a
+ bit like @string but covers more than one field. See the changelog
+ for pointers.
+
+* Extended option scoping [Biber only]
+
+ The package options related to name/list truncation and name
+ disambiguation are now conveniently settable globally/per-type/
+ per-entry. See the changelog for details. There's also a new
+ appendix with an overview of the scope of all options.
+
+* Field formats for dates
+
+ \printdate and friends now support 'virtual' field formats for all
+ dates. So, even though there is no 'date' field on the LaTeX end
+ of the workflow (only year/month/day and endyear/endmonth/endday),
+ you may now say:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{date}{\textbf{#1}}
+
+ to print the date in boldface, for example. Technically, this is
+ equivalent to:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{date}{\textbf{#1}}
+ \printtext[date]{\printdate}
+
+ except that it is readily built into \printdate.
+
+* Last-resort breakpoints for \url
+
+ URLs and DOIs consisting mostly or entirely of letters and numbers
+ may run into the margin if the \url command can't find suitable
+ breakpoints. I've introduced additional breakpoints after all
+ numbers and letters in the previous biblatex release in order to
+ deal with particularly nasty DOIS, but this turned out to be to
+ brute a solution.
+
+ To provide the best of both worlds, this release adds counters
+ which control the penalties associated with the additional
+ breakpoints. They are disabled by default but may be helpful (as a
+ last resort) if you need to deal with long and/or tricky DOIs. See
+ 'biburlnumpenalty' etc. in the manual for details. If you want to
+ enable the additional breakpoints, use high penalties; e.g.:
+
+ \setcounter{biburlnumpenalty}{9000}
+
+* Language support
+
+ Oleg Domanov contributed support for Russian. Note that the
+ Russian module requires UTF-8. Pieter Belmans updated the Dutch
+ language module.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.6
+
+* Biber update, new mapping feature
+
+ Biblatex 1.6 requires Biber 0.9.4. It will not work with any
+ previous release. Biber now supports user-space field mapping.
+ This means that you can set up mapping rules in the Biber
+ configuration file to deal with non-standard field names in .bib
+ files by mapping them to known field names.
+
+* Revised maxnames/minnames options
+
+ Biber now supports max/mincitenames and max/minbibnames as
+ separate values. This improvement has prompted a refactoring of
+ the corresponding package options. In previous versions, there
+ were three sets of values:
+
+ max/minnames -> backend+frontend default
+ max/mincitenames -> frontend only
+ max/minbibnames -> frontend only
+
+ The backend would get max/minnames, the other values were only
+ used on the LaTeX end, defaulting to max/minnames. Depending on
+ the citation style, this could lead to ambiguous citations if
+ max/minnames was out of sync with max/mincitenames. (This wasn't
+ really obvious from reading the manual.)
+
+ This can no longer happen. The new solution is simpler and
+ error-proof in this respect. The max/mincitenames and
+ max/minbibnames options do what their name indicates and are fully
+ supported by Biber. The max/minnames options now serve as master
+ options which set both max/minbibnames and max/mincitenames:
+
+ max/minnames -> max/mincitenames
+ -> max/minbibnames
+ max/mincitenames -> frontend+backend
+ max/minbibnames -> frontend+backend
+
+ We didn't bother to update the BibTeX backend as it is due to be
+ discontinued this fall anyway. The BibTeX backend will get the
+ max/mincitenames values only.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Removed local max/minnames and max/minitems options
+
+ As part of the above change, I've removed the local max/minnames
+ and max/minitems options from \printbibliography and friends to
+ enforce consistency. Please use the global options instead.
+
+* Added maxalphanames/minalphanames [Biber only]
+
+ With Biber, the 'labelalpha' field may now be configured
+ independently of max/mincitenames with the newly introduced
+ package options max/minalphanames.
+
+* MD5 hashes, per-name hashes [Biber only]
+
+ With Biber, the hashes provided in the namehash/fullhash fields
+ are now standard MD5 hashes. This means that they are stable
+ across multiple runs, multiple refsections, and multiple
+ documents.
+
+ We've also added per-name hashes. Every name in every name list
+ gets an MD5 hash, which is available in the 'hash' field. Note
+ that this field is only available locally in name formatting
+ directives.
+
+* Range compression/truncation
+
+ This release features a new command for range compression (i.e.,
+ format "123-128" as "123-8"). The command is configurable, can
+ handle lists of ranges separated by commas and/or semicolons, and
+ also normalizes the dashes. Note that combining this with
+ \mkpageprefix requires the field format to be set up in a specific
+ way. See \mkcomprange in the manual for details.
+
+ I've also overhauled the command which truncates ranges by only
+ printing the starting page of the range. The original
+ \mkpagefirst has been removed because of its awkward syntax. It is
+ superseded by \mkfirstpage. Note that this change is not
+ backwards-compatible because the syntax of the new command is
+ slightly different. You may need to update some format
+ definitions.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.5
+
+* Biber update
+
+ Biblatex 1.5 requires Biber 0.9.3. It will not work with any
+ previous release.
+
+* More name disambiguation modes [Biber only]
+
+ We've added some additional modes to the 'uniquename' and
+ 'uniquelist' options. Roughly speaking, the new 'min*' modes aim
+ for unambiguous citations (mainly author-year) rather than
+ disambiguating names in a strict way. There's a section in the
+ manual which discusses all the details. See the changelog for
+ pointers to the relevant parts of the manual.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.4
+
+* Biber update
+
+ Biblatex 1.4 requires Biber 0.9 or higher. It will not work with
+ any previous release.
+
+* Advanced name disambiguation in citations [Biber only]
+
+ Name disambiguation in citations has been greatly improved and
+ extended in this release. We're pretty excited about this feature
+ because it has been in the pipeline for such a long time and
+ because Biblatex/Biber is, to the best of my knowledge, the only
+ bibliographic tool providing fully automated disambiguation of
+ names in citations.
+
+ There are now two options controlling name disambiguation,
+ 'uniquename' and 'uniquelist'. You can use either option
+ stand-alone or combine both. This is best explained by way of
+ example. Consider the following data:
+
+ John Smith/John Doe 2011
+ John Smith/Jane Doe 2011
+ John Smith/Edward Doe 2011
+
+ Let's assume we're using the standard 'authoryear' style and set
+ uniquename=false. In this case, we would get the following
+ citations:
+
+ Smith and Doe 2011a
+ Smith and Doe 2011b
+ Smith and Doe 2011c
+
+ The extra letter appended to the year (that's the automatically
+ generated 'extrayear' field provided by the 'labelyear' option)
+ disambiguates the citations. Many style guides, however, mandate
+ that the extra letter be used to disambiguate works by the same
+ author(s) only, not works by different authors with the same last
+ name. In order to disambiguate the author's last name, you're
+ expected to add additional parts of the name, either as initials
+ or in full. This is what the 'uniquename' option does. Here are
+ the same citations with uniquename=init:
+
+ Smith and J. Doe 2011a
+ Smith and J. Doe 2011b
+ Smith and E. Doe 2011
+
+ 'uniquename=init' restricts name disambiguation to initials. Since
+ the first two Does are still ambiguous at that point, we need to
+ fall back to 'extrayear'. With uniquename=full, names are printed
+ in full where required:
+
+ Smith and John Doe 2011
+ Smith and Jane Doe 2011
+ Smith and E. Doe 2011
+
+ In the past, this feature was of limited use since it only worked
+ for entries with a single author/editor. It now works for any name
+ at any point in the list. Since this is only possible with Biber,
+ the feature has been removed entirely from the BibTeX backend.
+
+ When it comes to lists of names, there's another aspect to
+ ambiguity. Let's call it list ambiguity. Consider the following
+ data:
+
+ Doe/Jones/Smith 2011
+ Smith/Johnson/Doe 2011
+ Smith/Doe/Edwards 2011
+ Smith/Doe/Jones 2011
+
+ Most author-year and author-title styles will truncate long
+ author/editor lists in citations. For example, with maxnames=1
+ we'd get:
+
+ Doe et al. 2011
+ Smith et al. 2011a
+ Smith et al. 2011b
+ Smith et al. 2011c
+
+ Since the author lists are ambiguous after truncation, the
+ 'extrayear' marker is added by the style in order to ensure unique
+ citations. Here again, many style guides mandate that the extra
+ letter be used to disambiguate works by the same authors only. In
+ order to disambiguate author lists, you're typically required to
+ add more names, exceeding the maxnames/minnames truncation point.
+ The new 'uniquelist' feature introduced in this release does that
+ automatically. With maxnames=1 and uniquelist=true, we get:
+
+ Doe et al. 2011
+ Smith, Johnson et al. 2011
+ Smith, Doe and Edwards 2011
+ Smith, Doe and Jones 2011
+
+ As seen above, the 'uniquelist' option overrides the 'maxnames'
+ setting on a per-entry basis. Essentially, what happens is that
+ the "et al." parts of the citations get expanded to the point of
+ no ambiguity -- but no further than that.
+
+ 'uniquename' and 'uniquelist' may also be combined. Consider the
+ following data:
+
+ John Doe/Jane Smith/William Jones 2011
+ John Doe/John Smith/William Jones 2011
+ John Doe/Edward Smith/William Jones 2011
+ John Doe/John Edwards/William Jones 2011
+ John Doe/John Edwards/Jack Johnson 2011
+
+ With maxnames=1:
+
+ Doe et al. 2011a
+ Doe et al. 2011b
+ Doe et al. 2011c
+ Doe et al. 2011d
+ Doe et al. 2011e
+
+ With maxnames=1, uniquename=true, uniquelist=true:
+
+ Doe, Jane Smith et al. 2011
+ Doe, John Smith et al. 2011
+ Doe, E. Smith et al. 2011
+ Doe, Edwards and Jones 2011
+ Doe, Edwards and Johnson 2011
+
+ If multiple disambiguation options are active, names are
+ disambiguated first and works last. The order is as follows:
+
+ 1. uniquename
+ 2. uniquelist
+ 3. extrayear, singletitle
+
+ Adding this feature to existing styles is simple. The 'uniquename'
+ information needs to be evaluated in the name formatting directive
+ which controls the formatting of the 'labelname' list. The default
+ definition in biblatex.def is responsive to the 'uniquename'
+ option. If you're using that, just enable the package option and
+ that's it. If you're using a different format, check biblatex.def
+ on how to incorporate the 'uniquename' feature.
+
+ Adding support for 'uniquelist' is also trivial. If the second
+ optional argument of \printnames is omitted (i.e., no explicit
+ range is specified), \printnames{labelname} will print the
+ 'labelname' list up to the truncation point defined with the
+ 'maxnames'/'minnames' package options. If 'uniquelist' is enabled,
+ it will simply override 'maxnames' on a per-entry basis, i.e.,
+ \printnames will print the 'labelname' list up to point of no
+ ambiguity. Unless you're specifying explicit ranges, all you need
+ to do is enable the 'uniquelist' package option.
+
+* Name disambiguation in standard styles [Biber only]
+
+ All standard author-year and author-title styles now enable
+ uniquename/uniquelist disambiguation. Of course this only works
+ when using Biber.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.3
+
+The list of changes in Biblatex is fairly short this time. Most of
+the big feature improvements are found in Biber.
+
+* Biber 0.8.3, Biber in TeX Live main.
+
+ Update Biber to version 0.8.3 when upgrading to biblatex 1.3. Note
+ that Biber is now available from the main TeX Live repository.
+ This means that you don't need to point tlmgr to TLContrib any
+ more. It also implies that more architectures are supported.
+
+* Experimental Zotero and EndNote import [Biber only]
+
+ Biber now features import support for the Zotero RDF/XML and
+ EndNote XML formats. See the Biber manual for details and caveats.
+
+* Fine-grained name delimiter/spacing controls [Biber only]
+
+ The spacing between name parts and line breaks in names can now be
+ customized in great detail, especially with Biber. With BibTeX,
+ customization is much more limited but still possible to some
+ extent. See the manual for details.
+
+* Added citation counter
+
+ As its name suggests, the new 'citecounter' feature counts
+ citations, i.e., it indicates how many times an entry is cited in
+ a reference section. The value of the 'citecounter' counter refers
+ to the total per-entry/per-refsection citation count.
+
+ The counter works much like the citation trackers. It is useful
+ for styles which handle initial and repeated citations
+ differently. For example, you may want to suppress the
+ introduction of a shorthand of an entry in the initial citation if
+ it is cited only once anyway.
+
+* Added \smartcite command
+
+ I've added a new citation command called \smartcite (along with
+ \Smartcite, \smartcites, etc.). Essentially, this is a \footcite
+ command which behaves like \parencite when used in a footnote.
+ It's particularly useful in conjunction with autocite=footnote as
+ it makes \autocite even more versatile.
+
+ Style authors should note that the default setup for
+ autocite=footnote has been modified and now uses \smartcite
+ instead of \footcite. Providing a \smartcite command is
+ straightforward. In most cases, all you need to do in your style
+ is duplicate the definition of \footcite and adapt the wrapper
+ code like so:
+
+ \DeclareCiteCommand{\smartcite}
+ [\iffootnote{\mkbibparens}{\mkbibfootnote}]
+ {...}
+ {...}
+ {...}
+ {...}
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.2
+
+* Remote resources, experimental RIS import [Biber only]
+
+ Biber 0.8 features support for remote .bib files (HTTP/FTP) and
+ experimental RIS file import. See the Biber manual and
+ \addbibresource in the biblatex manual for details.
+
+* \bibliography superseded by \addbibresource
+
+ As Biber development opens new possibilities, I've refactored the
+ user interface for specifying bibliographic resources.
+ \bibliography is superseded by \addbibresource. There are two
+ differences when using \addbibresource:
+
+ 1) Always give the full file name, do not omit the .bib extension.
+ 2) No comma-separated lists, use one \addbibresource per bib file.
+
+ For example, the old form:
+
+ \bibliography{file1,file2}
+
+ is superseded by:
+
+ \addbibresource{file1.bib}
+ \addbibresource{file2.bib}
+
+ \addbibresource also supports options:
+
+ \addbibresource[location=local,type=file,datatype=bibtex]{file1.bib}
+
+ You only need to specify options which differ from the defaults
+ (local/file/bibtex), e.g.:
+
+ \addbibresource[datatype=ris]{file.ris}
+ \addbibresource[location=remote]{ftp://192.168.3.57/~fred/file1.bib}
+
+ The change is fully backwards compatible since \bibliography is
+ still available. There is no need to update existing files but
+ \addbibresource is the recommended way for new files.
+
+* Smart/customizable 'crossref' data inheritance [Biber only]
+
+ Biber has been supporting 'crossref' customization for some time
+ but the biblatex user interface was still missing. This release
+ finally adds a user interface. This means that you may configure
+ how the data is inherited from the entry the 'crossref' field
+ refers to. The manual has all the details, including the default
+ settings.
+
+ If you're using the 'crossref' field, this change is a significant
+ one since the smart data inheritance is set up by default. By
+ 'smart' I mean a sensible parent/child field mapping which
+ replaces BibTeX's symmetric mapping. There is no need any more to
+ duplicate fields.
+
+ BibTeX crossref:
+
+ book -> inbook
+ -----------------------------------
+ title -> title
+ booktitle -> booktitle
+
+ Biber crossref:
+
+ book -> inbook
+ -----------------------------------
+ title -> booktitle
+
+* New multi-volume entry types
+
+ There are four new entry types in this release: mvbook,
+ mvcollection, mvproceedings, mvreference. They are similar to the
+ established types without the 'mv' prefix but indicate a
+ multi-volume work explicitly.
+
+ This difference is crucial of you want to leverage Biber's
+ 'crossref' support because titles are inherited differently in
+ this case:
+
+ book -> inbook
+ -----------------------------------
+ title -> booktitle
+ subtitle -> booksubtitle
+ titleaddon -> booktitleaddon
+
+ mvbook -> inbook
+ -----------------------------------
+ title -> maintitle
+ subtitle -> mainsubtitle
+ titleaddon -> maintitleaddon
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.1
+
+Starting with this release, we'll leverage the possibilities of Biber
+to support features not possible with BibTeX. That's why most major
+new features in this release are 'Biber only'.
+
+* Biber update
+
+ Update Biber to version 0.7 when installing Biblatex 1.1. The
+ latest Biber is available from this location:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/
+ biblatex-biber/current/
+
+ Ready-to-run binaries are here:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/
+ biblatex-biber/current/binaries/
+
+* Configurable sorting schemes [Biber only]
+
+ This release introduces configurable sorting schemes. With Biber,
+ you may now set up arbitrary sorting specs. The new custom sorting
+ specs are very powerful and come with a flexible user interface.
+ See \DeclareSortingScheme, \DeclareSortExclusion, and
+ \DeclarePresort in the manual for details. Like the predefined
+ sorting specs, new ones are activated with the 'sorting' option.
+
+ If you are using Biber, all known sorting schemes are still
+ available by default, but they are now defined in biblatex.def
+ instead of being hard-coded in the backend.
+
+ If you are using BibTeX, note that the old hard-coded schemes in
+ biblatex.bst have not been altered. They continue to work as they
+ did before, but you can't modify them or define new ones.
+
+* Configurable 'labelname'/'labelyear' [Biber only]
+
+ The special fields 'labelname'/'labelyear' may now be customized
+ by style authors. In conjunction with the configurable sorting
+ schemes, this dramatically increases biblatex's flexibility,
+ especially with author-year, author-title, and verbose styles. See
+ \DeclareLabelname and \DeclareLabelyear in the manual for details.
+
+* Introducing per-type package options
+
+ Starting with this release, certain package options may be set on
+ a per-type basis. Use the new optional argument of
+ \ExecuteBibliographyOptions to specify the type. Note that most
+ per-type options are 'Biber only'. For details, see the rather
+ lengthy list of per-type options in the changelog.
+
+* Improved static entry sets [Biber only]
+
+ Static entry sets (i.e., @set entries in the bib file) are now
+ natively supported by Biber. This means that instead of the rather
+ convoluted old setup:
+
+ @Set{set1,
+ entryset = {key1,key2,key3},
+ crossref = {key1},
+ }
+ @Article{key1,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ author = {...},
+ title = {...},
+ ...
+ }
+ @InCollection{key2,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ author = {...},
+ title = {...},
+ ...
+ }
+ @Article{key3,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ author = {...},
+ title = {...},
+ ...
+ }
+
+ defining a static set is now as simple as this:
+
+ @Set{set1,
+ entryset = {key1,key2,key3},
+ }
+
+ The 'crossref' in the @set head entry and the 'entryset' pointers
+ in the member entries are no longer required. Defining a static
+ set is now as simple as adding a @set entry with an 'entryset'
+ field specifying the set. That's all.
+
+ Since there are no 'entryset' pointers in the member entries, the
+ members may be part of a set in one document/refsection and
+ stand-alone references in another one, depending on the presence
+ of the @set entry. If the @set entry is cited, the set members are
+ grouped automatically. If not, they behave like regular entries.
+
+* Introducing dynamic entry sets [Biber only]
+
+ Dynamic entry sets are a new way of grouping entries. They differ
+ from static ones in that they are not defined in the bib file but
+ declared in the document, i.e., they work on a per-document/
+ per-refsection basis. Instead of defining a set in the bib file:
+
+ @Set{set1,
+ entryset = {key1,key2,key3},
+ }
+
+ you declare it like that in the document:
+
+ \defbibentryset{set1}{key1,key2,key3}
+
+ This works anywhere in the document, including the document body.
+ Apart from that, dynamic entry sets work exactly like static ones.
+ See the manual for more information.
+
+* mcite/mciteplus-like citation commands [Biber only]
+
+ Users of the mcite/mciteplus packages are already familiar with
+ the concept of a dynamic entry set. With mcite/mciteplus, sets are
+ defined as they are cited. To facilitate migration to biblatex,
+ this release comes with a special citation module which provides
+ mcite/mciteplus-like citation commands on top of the commands
+ provided by the main citation style. For example, the following
+ command:
+
+ \mcite{setA,*keyA1,*keyA2,*keyA3}
+
+ is equivalent to this:
+
+ \defbibentryset{setA}{keyA1,keyA2,keyA3}\cite{setA}
+
+ Note that there is a syntactical difference between biblatex's
+ dynamic entry sets and the citation grouping of mcite/mciteplus.
+ With mcite/mciteplus, the first set member plays double-duty as
+ group identifier. With biblatex, an entry set is an entity in its
+ own right which requires a unique entry key.
+
+ For example, an mcite citation group is declared like this:
+
+ \cite{keyA1,*keyA2,*keyA3}
+
+ In contrast to that, a dynamic entry set defined with one of the
+ commands provided by biblatex's 'mcite' package option is set up
+ like that:
+
+ \mcite{setA,*keyA1,*keyA2,*keyA3}
+
+ Note the extra identifier 'setA': this is the entry key assigned
+ to the set. See the manual for further details.
+
+* Low-level bibliography filters
+
+ The \defbibfilter command and the 'filter' option of
+ \printbibliography are now supplemented by \defbibcheck and the
+ corresponding 'check' option.
+
+ Conceptually, a 'check' is like a filter controlling which entries
+ are included in a certain (sub-)bibliography. In contrast to
+ filters, however, the checks don't use a high-level syntax. Checks
+ are macros which directly employ the low-level conditionals of
+ biblatex's data interface. Here's an example 'check' which tests
+ if an entry has an abstract:
+
+ \defbibcheck{hasabstract}{%
+ \iffieldundef{abstract}{\skipentry}{}%
+ }
+ ...
+ \printbibliography[check=hasabstract]
+
+ This will only print entries with an 'abstract' field. More complex
+ checks are possible as well. For example, this check will exclude
+ all entries published prior to the year 2000:
+
+ \defbibcheck{recent}{%
+ \iffieldint{year}
+ {\ifnumless{\thefield{year}}{2000}
+ {\skipentry}
+ {}}
+ {\skipentry}}
+
+ See the manual for further details.
+
+* More flexible 'maxnames'/'minnames' controls
+
+ I've added some additional package options related to 'maxnames'/
+ 'minnames'. See 'maxbibnames'/'minbibnames' and 'maxcitenames'/
+ 'mincitenames' in the manual.
+
+ The new options don't introduce entirely new functionality. They
+ are rather convenience options which allow setting 'maxnames'/
+ 'minnames' in a more flexible way. For example, setting the
+ 'maxbibnames' option like this:
+
+ \usepackage[maxnames=3,maxbibnames=99]{biblatex}
+
+ is equivalent to:
+
+ \usepackage[maxnames=3]{biblatex}
+ \begin{document}
+ ...
+ \printbibliography[maxnames=99]
+
+ 'maxcitenames' does the same for all citations.
+
+* Defining and resetting per-type formats
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat and related commands support per-type
+ formatting directives. By default, biblatex uses this feature to
+ format the 'title' field depending on the entry type. For example,
+ book titles are printed in italics, article titles use quotes
+ instead. In previous releases, lines like the following ones were
+ found in biblatex.def:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[inbook]{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}
+ ...
+
+ This release brings two new features related to that.
+
+ 1) \DeclareFieldFormat and related commands now support a
+ comma-separated list of entry types. This facilitates the
+ definition of per-type formats:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[article,inbook,...]{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}
+
+ 2) \DeclareFieldFormat and friends now come with a starred variant
+ which resets all type-specific formats. With previous releases,
+ removing or modifying the formatting could be tedious if you
+ didn't make that book/article distrinction. You had to change the
+ default plus all type-specific formats:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{#1}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{#1}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[inbook]{title}{#1}
+ ...
+
+ The new starred commands do that in one shot:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{#1}
+
+ Note that the default formatting has not been altered. It's just a
+ bit easier to modify it now.
+
+* New option 'mergedate' (authoryear style)
+
+ By popular request, I've added a 'mergedate' option to the
+ 'authoryear' bibliography style. The option controls whether or
+ not the date label is merged with the date specification in the
+ bibliography.
+
+ For example, while mergedate=false outputs:
+
+ Doe, John (2008a). Article. In: Journal 23.5 (May 2008),
+ pp. 5-24.
+
+ mergedate=true will print:
+
+ Doe, John (May 2008a). Article. In: Journal 23.5, pp. 15-34.
+
+ Note that 'mergedate=true' is in fact the old behavior (and the
+ default setting). 'mergedate=false' is the new feature!
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.0
+
+Here it finally is, the long-awaited first stable release of
+biblatex. As the 0.9* releases have proven to be very mature and
+reliable, this release is essentially 0.9e with some localization
+updates and minor tweaks. It concludes the 0.9 development cycle
+rather than introducing completely new features.
+
+The stable status basically has two consequences. 1) We'll try to be
+more cautious in terms of backwards compatibility in the future and
+2) Biblatex moves to a different location on CTAN. See below for
+details.
+
+* Development Roadmap
+
+ Over the course of the 1.x development cycle, you'll increasingly
+ see new features being added which are tagged as 'Biber only' in
+ the manual. The BibTeX backend of Biblatex will be maintained for
+ some more time but it won't receive any feature updates. There is
+ a simple reason for that: the kind of features we'll introduce
+ can't be handled by BibTeX (that's why we have Biber, after all).
+
+ While you can stay with the BibTeX backend for some more time,
+ it's highly advisable to switch to Biber fairly soon as BibTeX
+ support will be discontinued at some point. To give you an idea
+ of the timescale: we're talking months rather than years.
+
+* New location on CTAN
+
+ The package moves from
+
+ tex-archive/macros/latex/exptl/biblatex/
+ to
+ tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex/
+
+ The pre-bundled TDS archive moves from
+
+ tex-archive/install/macros/latex/exptl/
+ to
+ tex-archive/install/macros/latex/contrib/
+
+* New contrib location on CTAN
+
+ There's also a new location for contributed styles:
+
+ tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex-contrib/
+
+ The old exptl/biblatex-contrib/ directory is still available and
+ will keep being available as a staging area for styles which are
+ work in progress. If your style is considered stable, you may
+ want to move it to contrib/biblatex-contrib/. If it's
+ experimental, you may prefer exptl/biblatex-contrib/.
+
+* Biber update
+
+ When updating Biblatex, make sure you also get the latest Biber
+ from this location:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/
+ biblatex-biber/current/
+
+ Ready-to-run binaries are here:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/
+ biblatex-biber/current/binaries/
+
+* Modified 'bibencoding' package option, new default
+
+ I've renamed 'bibencoding=inputenc' to 'bibencoding=auto' to make
+ it clear that this option is not specific to the inputenc package
+ and also works with XeTeX/LuaTeX in native UTF-8 mode.
+ bibencoding=inputenc is still supported as an alias.
+
+ 'bibencoding=auto' is the new package default. This means that
+ biblatex by default assumes that the workflow is transparent,
+ i.e., that the .bib files use the same encoding as the .tex file.
+ Note that it is the input encoding of the .tex (!) file which is
+ detected automatically. If the .bib files use a different
+ encoding, you always need to specify it explicitly.
+
+ If you prefer the old default, you can easily restore it by
+ adding the following like to your biblatex.cfg file:
+
+ \ExecuteBibliographyOptions{bibencoding=ascii}
+
+ The new default setting may trigger some warnings which have not
+ been triggered before. Consider this case:
+
+ \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
+ \usepackage{biblatex}
+
+ This will trigger a warning instructing you to switch to bibtex8
+ or Biber. That's because the defaults are 'backend=bibtex' and
+ 'bibencoding=auto'. The latter implies that the .bib files are
+ Latin1 encoded but traditional BibTeX can't handle that, hence
+ the warning. If the .bib files do in fact use Latin1 encoding it's
+ a good idea to heed the advice:
+
+ \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
+ \usepackage[backend=bibtex8/biber]{biblatex}
+
+ If they're Ascii, set the encoding explicitly:
+
+ \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
+ \usepackage[bibencoding=ascii]{biblatex}
+
+ On the other hand, you may delete all old 'bibencoding=inputenc'
+ options as this is the default setting now.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9e
+
+* Biber update, options 'sortupper', 'sortlocale'
+
+ Biber has been updated to version 0.5.7. There are ready-to-run
+ binaries for the latest version. If you're using Biber, upgrade
+ to 0.5.7 or later when upgrading to biblatex 0.9e.
+
+ Biblatex now offers two package options which correspond to
+ Biber's command line options --sortupper and --sortlocale, the
+ point being that you can set them on a per-document basis. I've
+ also added some explanations concerning encodings and locale
+ settings. See the changelog for pointers.
+
+* Improved backrefs for @set entries, 'backrefsetstyle' option
+
+ I've revised and improved the handling of back references related
+ to entry sets. Biblatex is now capable of tracking the @set head
+ entry and the set members separately, if so desired.
+
+ The new package option 'backrefsetstyle' controls the tracking
+ mode. By way of example, consider a set ("set1") with three
+ members ("memA", "memB", "memC") and the following input:
+
+ on page 1: \cite{set1}
+ on page 2: \cite{memA}
+ on page 3: \cite{memB}
+ on page 4: \cite{memC}
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=setonly, this will generate the following back
+ references:
+
+ set1: 1, 2, 3, 4
+ memA: -
+ memB: -
+ memC: -
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=memonly:
+
+ set1: -
+ memA: 1, 2
+ memB: 1, 3
+ memC: 1, 4
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=setormem:
+
+ set1: 1
+ memA: 2
+ memB: 3
+ memC: 4
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=setandmem:
+
+ set1: 1, 2, 3, 4
+ memA: 2
+ memB: 3
+ memC: 4
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=memandset:
+
+ set1: 1
+ memA: 1, 2
+ memB: 1, 3
+ memC: 1, 4
+
+ With backrefsetstyle=setplusmem:
+
+ set1: 1, 2, 3, 4
+ memA: 1, 2
+ memB: 1, 3
+ memC: 1, 4
+
+ To take advantage of that in custom styles, only a minor update
+ is required. Supporting the @set entry and the set members
+ separately is pretty intuitive. Any \printlist command in the
+ @set entry will see the 'pageref' list of the @set entry; the
+ \printlist commands in the regular drivers (which handle the set
+ members) will see the 'pageref' list of the respective member:
+
+ \DeclareBibliographyDriver{set}{%
+ \entryset{}{}%
+ \newunit\newblock % <- NEWLY ADDED
+ \printlist{pageref}% <- NEWLY ADDED
+ \finentry}
+
+ \DeclareBibliographyDriver{<entry type>}{%
+ ...
+ \printlist{pageref}%
+ ...
+ }
+
+ There are some bibmacros as well as a new \bibpagerefpunct
+ separator to help with that, hence the actual code in the
+ standard styles works like this:
+
+ \DeclareBibliographyDriver{set}{%
+ \entryset{}{}%
+ \newunit\newblock % <- NEWLY ADDED
+ \usebibmacro{setpageref}% <- NEWLY ADDED
+ \finentry}
+
+ \DeclareBibliographyDriver{<entry type>}{%
+ ...
+ \setunit{\bibpagerefpunct}\newblock % <- MODIFIED
+ \usebibmacro{pageref}%
+ ...
+ }
+
+ That's all. This will ensure that all tracking modes are
+ supported.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9d
+
+* Date formatting options
+
+ I've removed all '<date>=none' options as this feature seems to
+ be causing some confusion. Setting '<date>=none' was not
+ sufficient to suppress a certain date in all cases because date
+ specifications may also incorporate elements such as the 'issue'
+ field, be tied to the 'url' in a way that leads to erroneous
+ formatting if there is no date, etc. I'm afraid selectively
+ omitting dates really needs to be handled on the style level.
+
+ There's a new set of '<date>=iso8601' options which print
+ extended-format ISO-8601 dates. Not all of ISO-8601 is
+ implemented, only the core elements of the extended format which
+ are also used in .bib files, i.e., "yyyy-mm-dd" for individual
+ dates and "yyyy-mm-dd/yyyy-mm-dd" for ranges. Full-scale ISO-8601
+ date/time specs like "2005-08-09T18:31:42P3Y6M4DT12H30M17S"
+ wouldn't make much sense in a bibliography anyway. Note that
+ these options are language agnostic. They will override any
+ region-specific settings provided by .lbx files. That's the
+ whole point of ISO-8601, after all.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9c
+
+* Improved reencoding support
+
+ Biber 0.5.5 is capable of reencoding the data in bib files on the
+ fly. This solution is more robust than biblatex's macro-level
+ reencoding with inputenc. With 'backend=biber', biblatex will now
+ use Biber instead of inputenc. In addition to that, the biblatex
+ code which detects if the bib data needs to be reencoded to match
+ the encoding of the tex file is smarter now and should work
+ smoothly.
+
+ In practice, this simply means that you may always use the
+ 'bibencoding' option to specify the encoding of your bib files
+ (there was some potential for spurious reencoding steps in
+ previous versions), with any backend. It is in fact highly
+ recommended to do so for two reasons: 1) the default value is
+ 'ascii', and 2) biblatex will warn you if the bib encoding can't
+ be handled by the backend you selected.
+
+ You may put your platform default in biblatex.cfg; there is no
+ need to do that in each and every preamble (you may still
+ override all biblatex.cfg settings on a per-document basis in the
+ preamble, if required).
+
+* UTF-8 encoded entry keys and bib filenames
+
+ Biber 0.5.5 supports UTF-8 encoded entry keys. Biblatex will work
+ with UTF-8 keys and filenames when running on an engine with
+ native UTF-8 support (i.e., XeTeX or LuaTeX). Macro-level UTF-8
+ support with inputenc/inputenx will not do.
+
+* Improved arXiv support
+
+ I've added an additional eprint-related field plus two aliases to
+ better support arXiv references. The changelog includes pointers
+ to the relevant sections of the manual.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9b
+
+* Extended Biber interface
+
+ If you're using Biber as backend, make sure you update Biber as
+ well (to version 0.5.4 or higher) because the Biblatex -> Biber
+ interface has been extended.
+
+ The most obvious effect of this improvement is that Biber is now
+ capable of handling multiple refsections in a single pass. If you
+ have any 'refsection' environments in a document, you only need to
+ run Biber once.
+
+* New dependency: logreq package
+
+ Starting with this release, biblatex will use the logreq package
+ to write machine-readable messages to an auxiliary log file. When
+ installing biblatex 0.9b, make sure to install the logreq package
+ as well. It is available from CTAN:
+
+ http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/logreq/
+
+ A TDS archive is available as well:
+
+ http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/install/macros/latex/logreq.tds.zip
+
+* Modified \defbibfilter syntax
+
+ I've modified \defbibfilter such that it uses \ifboolexpr (from
+ etoolbox.sty) instead of \ifthenelse (from ifthen.sty)
+ internally. \ifboolexpr uses a slightly different syntax.
+ For example, this definition:
+
+ \defbibfilter{example}{%
+ \( \type{book} \or \type{inbook} \)
+ \and \keyword{abc}
+ \and \not \keyword{x y z}
+ }
+
+ becomes:
+
+ \defbibfilter{example}{%
+ ( type=book or type=inbook )
+ and keyword=abc
+ and not keyword={x y z}
+ }
+
+ There is no need to update existing files since the old
+ \ifthenelse syntax is still supported. \defbibfilter will
+ implicitly 'translate' at definition time, if required.
+
+* Renamed option 'defernums' to 'defernumbers'
+
+ The package option 'defernums' has been renamed to
+ 'defernumbers'.
+
+* Prefixed numerical citations, improved 'numeric' styles
+
+ I've added three options to \printbibliography which are related
+ to numerical citation schemes. They are called 'prefixnumbers',
+ 'resetnumbers', and 'omitnumbers'. Note that these options
+ require that 'defernumbers' be set globally since they assign the
+ numeric labels as the bibliography is generated (as opposed to at
+ the beginning of the document body, as the data is read in).
+
+ The new options enable the numeric styles to support prefixed
+ numerical citations. The following may be accomplished by setting
+ 'prefixnumbers' for each prefixed subbibliography:
+
+ REFERENCES
+ Printed References
+ [A1] ...
+ [A2] ...
+ Online References
+ [B1] ...
+ [B2] ...
+
+ It is also possible to mix one non-prefixed subbibliography with
+ one or more prefixed ones (set 'prefixnumbers' for each prefixed
+ subbib and 'resetnumbers' for the non-prefixed one) or even to
+ mix numerical citations with author-year or author-title
+ citations (set 'omitnumbers' for all non-numerical subbibs).
+
+ See the files '16-numeric-prefixed-1', '17-numeric-prefixed-2',
+ and '18-numeric-hybrid' in the 'examples' subdirectory for
+ practical examples.
+
+ Adding support for prefixed numerical citations to existing
+ numeric styles is trivial. The prefixes set in the argument to
+ \printbibliography are available in the 'prefixnumber' field. If
+ no prefix has been set, the field is undefined. Hence, in the cbx
+ file, simply replace:
+
+ \printfield{labelnumber}
+
+ with:
+
+ \printfield{prefixnumber}%
+ \printfield{labelnumber}
+
+ In the bbx file, the prefix needs to be incorporated in the
+ definition of the bibliography environment. Replace:
+
+ \defbibenvironment{bibliography}
+ {\list
+ {\printfield[labelnumberwidth]{labelnumber}}
+ {...}
+ {\endlist}
+ {\item}
+
+ with:
+
+ \defbibenvironment{bibliography}
+ {\list
+ {\printtext[labelnumberwidth]{%
+ \printfield{prefixnumber}%
+ \printfield{labelnumber}}}
+ {...}
+ {\endlist}
+ {\item}
+
+ The numeric styles which ship with biblatex support prefixed
+ labels out of the box.
+
+* New author-title style
+
+ There's a new style which rounds off the selection of
+ author-title styles which ship with biblatex. It's called
+ 'authortitle-ticomp' and, as you can tell by the name, it's a
+ variant of the 'authortitle-tcomp' style with an 'ibidem'
+ feature.
+
+* Improved verbose styles, added 'citepages' option
+
+ By popular request, all verbose styles now offer a 'citepages'
+ option which deals with the 'pages' field in citations, in
+ particular in cases in which the postnote is numerical.
+
+ Note that style specific options are only mentioned briefly in
+ the manual. They are discussed in greater details in the example
+ file for the style (in the 'examples' subdirectory).
+
+* Long + short bibliography strings available
+
+ Previous biblatex releases used to pick the long or the short
+ version of the strings in the lbx files at file load time,
+ depending on the setting of the global 'abbreviate' option.
+ Starting with this release, both versions are kept in memory.
+
+ In addition to \bibstring and friends, which print the long or
+ the short version of the string (depending on the 'abbreviate'
+ option), there are now commands like \biblstring and \bibsstring,
+ which force the long or the short version, respectively.
+
+ Note that the auxiliary macro \lbx@fromlang, which is used in lbx
+ files, has been split up into \lbx@lfromlang and \lbx@sfromlang.
+
+* Automatically omit redundant language specifications
+
+ Some style guides require that authors indicate the language of all
+ foreign-language items in the bibliography. Biblatex's 'language'
+ field (which is in fact a list) helps to deal with this
+ requirement. If you are writing in more than one language and
+ reuse the same set of bib files in different contexts, it is
+ convenient to include this information whenever you add a new
+ entry to a bib file. However, this leads to redundant
+ information. It is rather odd to indicate "English" in the
+ reference to an English book cited in an English article.
+
+ The 'clearlang' option and \DeclareRedundantLanguages avoid such
+ redundant language specifications. \DeclareRedundantLanguages
+ maps languages as indicated in the 'language' field to the
+ language identifiers of the babel package. Given this
+ information, biblatex can omit the language if it matches the
+ language of the document. Technically, this means that the
+ 'language' field will appear as undefined to styles, so it is
+ safe to simply use '\printlist{language}' in styles and let
+ biblatex sort out the rest.
+
+ The 'clearlang' option controls this feature globally.
+ \DeclareRedundantLanguages mappings are typically included in lbx
+ files (but may also be given on a per-document basis in the
+ preamble). All standard lbx files which ship with biblatex now
+ include such mappings and 'clearlang' is enabled by default.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9a
+
+This release adds a few changes and improvements which were
+originally scheduled for biblatex 0.9 but somehow got lost in the
+release process or didn't make it in time. Pay attention to all
+changes tagged as "CAVEAT".
+
+* [CAVEAT] Prenote placement with \cite, \textcite [numeric/alphabetic]
+
+ The placement of the prenote in all numeric and alphabetic styles
+ has been modified.
+
+ Old format:
+
+ \cite[see][15]{key} -> see [1, p. 15]
+ \parencite[see][15]{key} -> [see 1, p. 15]
+ \textcite[see][15]{key} -> see Doe [1, p. 15]
+
+ New format:
+
+ \cite[see][15]{key} -> [see 1, p. 15]
+ \parencite[see][15]{key} -> [see 1, p. 15]
+ \textcite[see][15]{key} -> Doe [see 1, p. 15]
+
+ As seen in the above examples, the new format places the prenote
+ inside the brackets. If you want the prenote outside of the
+ brackets, you can simply use:
+
+ see \cite[15]{key} -> see [1, p. 15]
+ see \textcite[15]{key} -> see Doe [1, p. 15]
+
+ which is similar to the old format.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Prenote placement with \textcite [authoryear/authortitle]
+
+ The placement of the prenote in all authoryear and authortitle
+ styles has also been modified.
+
+ Old format:
+
+ \cite[see][15]{key} -> see Doe 2010, p. 15
+ \parencite[see][15]{key} -> (see Doe 2010, p. 15)
+ \textcite[see][15]{key} -> see Doe (2010, p. 15)
+
+ New format:
+
+ \cite[see][15]{key} -> see Doe 2010, p. 15
+ \parencite[see][15]{key} -> (see Doe 2010, p. 15)
+ \textcite[see][15]{key} -> Doe (see 2010, p. 15)
+
+ The new format places the prenote inside the brackets. If you
+ want the prenote outside of the brackets, you can simply use:
+
+ see \textcite[15]{key} -> see Doe (2010, p. 15)
+
+ which is similar to the old format.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Introducing \defbibenvironment
+
+ I'm phasing out the thebibliography/theshorthands environments
+ and the corresponding commands \thebibitem and \thelositem.
+ Essentially, the old way of controlling the (high-level) layout
+ of the bibliography and the list of shorthands is replaced by a
+ new mechanism based on \defbibenvironment. It's not radically
+ different. For example, where a style has code like this:
+
+ \renewenvironment*{thebibliography}
+ {\list{}{...}}
+ {\endlist}
+ \renewcommand*{\thebibitem}{\item}
+
+ \renewenvironment*{theshorthands}
+ {\list{}{...}}
+ {\endlist}
+ \renewcommand*{\thelositem}{\item}
+
+ replace it with:
+
+ \defbibenvironment{bibliography}
+ {\list{}{...}}
+ {\endlist}
+ {\item}
+
+ \defbibenvironment{shorthands}
+ {\list{}{...}}
+ {\endlist}
+ {\item}
+
+ The new system is similar to \defbibheading: you use
+ \defbibenvironment to define the environment and the new 'env'
+ option of \printbibliography and \printshorthands to select it.
+ The point of the new system is that you can have different styles
+ for different (partial) bibliographies in a document. It's also
+ conceptually in line with \defbibheading now.
+
+ I've added some compatibility code to biblatex. Older styles
+ using thebibliography/thebibitem and theshorthands/thelositem
+ will continue to work until you use \defbibenvironment for the
+ first time to modify the default definition. From that point on,
+ the old environment will be ignored.
+
+ Updating old styles is of course highly recommended. The
+ compatibility code may be removed from biblatex after 1.0. The
+ standard styles have been updated to use the new syntax. They
+ will ignore any changes based on the old definitions.
+
+* Added \printbibheading
+
+ \printbibheading is the heading part of \printbibliography. This
+ is useful for subdivided bibliographies. E.g., instead of
+
+ \chapter{\bibname}
+ \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography,type={...},...]
+ \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography,type={...},...]
+ ...
+
+ you use:
+
+ \printbibheading % = \printbibheading[heading=bibliography]
+ \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography,type={...},...]
+ \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography,type={...},...]
+ ...
+
+ The point is that the overall heading is in sync with the
+ subheadings.
+
+* Smart parentheses and brackets
+
+ This release adds a new 'parenthesis tracker', i.e., if
+ parentheses and/or brackets are nested, biblatex alternates
+ between parentheses and brackets, depending on the nesting level.
+ E.g.:
+
+ \mkbibparens{text \mkbibparens{text} text}
+ \mkbibbrackets{text \mkbibbrackets{text} text}
+
+ yields
+
+ (text [text] text)
+ [text (text) text]
+
+ This also works with \bibopenparen + \bibcloseparen and
+ \bibopenbracket + \bibclosebracket as well as the new citation
+ commands \parentext and \brackettexts.
+
+* Open ended date ranges
+
+ There's one thing I forgot to mention when introducing the new
+ date fields in the previous release. It is possible to specify an
+ open ended range by leaving the end date blank:
+
+ 1988/1992 = 1988-1992
+ 1988/ = 1988-today
+ 1988 = 1988
+
+ Open ended ranges are represented by a defined but empty
+ "endyear" component on the level of the style interface:
+
+ date = {1988} -> day = undefined
+ month = undefined
+ year = "1988"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = undefined
+
+ date = {1988/} -> day = undefined
+ month = undefined
+ year = "1988"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = EMPTY
+
+ date = {1988/1992} -> day = undefined
+ month = undefined
+ year = "1988"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = "1992"
+
+ All high-level date commands like \printdate detect and handle
+ open ended ranges autoamtically. Use
+
+ \iffieldequalstr{endyear}{}
+ {true}
+ {false}
+
+ if you want to test for open ended ranges explicitly.
+
+* Extended language support: Finnish
+
+ This release comes with a finnish.lbx file. The translations
+ have been contributed by Hannu V\"ais\"anen.
+
+* Updated language support: Greek
+
+ This release comes with an updated greek.lbx file contributed
+ by biblatex user Prokopis.
+
+* Updated examples, some updates in the manual
+
+ Some of the examples which ship with biblatex were not completely
+ up to date in the 0.9 release. They have been updated now. I've
+ also corrected/added a few minor points in the manual.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.9
+
+Several features on my 'to do' list have been deferred because they
+introduce backwards compatibility issues. I wanted to implement them
+all in one shot so that style authors only need to update their
+styles once. This release finally takes that step. In other words:
+
+ THIS VERSION IS NOT FULLY BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE!
+
+Style authors will most likely need to update their styles to make
+them work with this release. You will find detailed hints about what
+needs to be updated in the release notes below. Changes which raise
+backwards compatibility issues are tagged as "CAVEAT". Users who
+rely on styles found in:
+
+ macros/latex/exptl/biblatex-contrib/
+
+on CTAN are advised to stick with biblatex 0.8 for the time being
+and defer the upgrade to 0.9 until the styles they use have been
+updated. If you have accidentally installed this release and find
+out that you need to downgrade, you can get the previous biblatex
+release from the project page on Sourceforge:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex/files/
+
+CTAN always carries the latest version.
+
+I have received many inquiries about why biblatex is not yet
+included in TeX Live and MikTeX and why I was maintaining that nasty
+do-not-distribute clause. There seems to be some confusion about
+what the term 'stable' means. The point typically brought up was
+that biblatex runs well and is thus 'stable'. Well, in that sense,
+biblatex has been pretty stable since version 0.1. However, it has
+not been stable in the sense of maintaining backwards compatibility
+since version 0.1. This release, however, is finally considered
+suitable for wider distribution.
+
+* Distributing biblatex
+
+ This release should be a reasonable target for TeX distributions,
+ even though biblatex is still tagged as 'beta' and located in the
+ experimental branch on CTAN. I will make the move to the stable
+ branch when it hits 1.0. Given the number of changes and new
+ features in this release, it's quite possible that some bugs
+ slipped in. If you start packaging biblatex now, be prepared for
+ some maintenance releases (i.e., 0.9a, 0.9b, etc.) in the
+ upcoming weeks.
+
+ A few more notes to distributors:
+
+ - See the README file for requirements and dependencies.
+
+ - The *.csf files in doc/resources go into TEXMF/bibtex/csf/.
+ The names will not conflict with the *.csf files shipping with
+ biblatex8. Biblatex uses names like latin1.csf while biblatex8
+ uses 88591lat.csf.
+
+ - It would be nice to have two copies of biblatex-examples.bib
+ installed, one in TEXMF/doc for users looking for documentation
+ in the usual place and a second copy in TEXMF/bibtex/bib/.
+ Since users are encouraged to use this database in minimal
+ examples, it's handy to have it readily available.
+
+ - Biber is the next-generation backend of biblatex. It would be
+ very welcome to have a Biber package as well. See the project
+ page on http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/ for details.
+ Note that biblatex currently supports three backends: BibTeX
+ (i.e., traditional 7-bit BibTeX), bibtex8, and Biber.
+ BibTeX/bibtex8 support will be discontinued in biblatex 2.x.
+
+ - A package for the contributed styles found in
+
+ macros/latex/exptl/biblatex-contrib/
+
+ is also welcome because some of these styles are already very
+ popular. However, wait for the styles in to be updated to
+ biblatex 0.9 before packaging them.
+
+* Contributing to biblatex
+
+ Localizing biblatex heavily depends on user contributions. I've
+ added a new tracker named 'Contrib' to the project page which
+ will hopefully help to organize this process:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?group_id=244752
+
+ There is one item for each language supported by biblatex. The
+ status of the item reflects the localization status of the
+ corresponding language. If the status is "open", the localization
+ module is incomplete or in need of peer review by a native
+ speaker. If the status is "closed", the module is complete and
+ there are no known issues (you can still post comments to closed
+ items and upload files if you want to suggest improvements).
+
+ If you have updates for a language module, upload the updated
+ *.lbx file in the appropriate thread. If you want to contribute
+ support for a new language, simply open a new tracker item.
+
+* Updating existing biblatex styles
+
+ As usual, the full list of changes is found in the biblatex
+ manual. The release notes you are just reading mention all
+ changes which are not backwards compatible. Pay attention to all
+ "CAVEAT" points.
+
+ When you update your style, it may be a good idea to add some
+ code which checks that the style is running under biblatex 0.9 or
+ later. You can use the standard LaTeX \@ifpackagelater test for
+ this purpose. Here's some sample code (where 'YYYY/MM/DD' needs
+ to be replaced with the real release date of biblatex 0.9 and
+ 'MYSTYLE' with the name of your style):
+
+ \@ifpackagelater{biblatex}{YYYY/MM/DD}
+ {}
+ {\PackageError{biblatex}
+ {Outdated 'biblatex' package}
+ {The 'MYSTYLE' style requires biblatex v0.9 or later.\MessageBreak
+ You are using: '\csuse{ver@biblatex.sty}'.\MessageBreak
+ This is a fatal error. I'm aborting now.}%
+ \endinput}
+
+ Since \@ifpackagelater is in fact a 'greater than or equal' test,
+ you can simply replace YYYY/MM/DD with the date found in the
+ \ProvidesPackage declaration at the top of biblatex.sty.
+
+* New Biber interface
+
+ Biber is the next-generation database backend of biblatex. It is
+ available from:
+
+ http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/
+
+ If you decide to use Biber, set 'backend=biber' (preferably in
+ biblatex.cfg) and upgrade to Biber 0.5 or higher. Biblatex 0.9
+ uses a new interface to talk to Biber hence you must specify
+ backend=biber and use the latest Biber version.
+
+ Note that biblatex and Biber use separate bug trackers. If you're
+ using Biber and find a bug, try your example with a different
+ backend. If the problem persists, report it as a biblatex bug. If
+ not, report it as a Biber bug.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Revised and expanded date fields
+
+ All date fields have been expanded such that they support ranges
+ in 'start/end' format. Of course it is still possible to specify
+ a single date and you may also truncate dates at the end. In sum,
+ the following examples are all valid date specifications:
+
+ 1850
+ 1967-02
+ 2009-01-31
+ 1988/1992 <- this is a range (from 1988 until 1992)
+ 2002-01/2002-02
+ 1995-01-31/1995-02-05
+
+ This format is supported by the following fields: 'date',
+ 'origdate', 'eventdate', 'urldate' (for the sake of consistency
+ in the case of 'urldate'). I have also removed or modified some
+ of the fields for date components (e.g., 'day', 'urlday', etc.):
+
+ * [CAVEAT] The field 'day' has been removed. Use the 'date' field
+ instead to specify full dates.
+
+ * [CAVEAT] The field 'year' is no longer a range field but a
+ literal field. Year ranges should be given in the 'date' field
+ instead.
+
+ * [CAVEAT] I've removed the field 'origyear' and added 'origdate'
+ as a replacement. 'origdate' is similar to 'date', i.e., it
+ takes a date specification in 'yyyy-mm-dd' format and supports
+ date ranges in 'start/end' format.
+
+ * [CAVEAT] The fields 'urlday', 'urlmonth', 'urlyear' have been
+ removed. Use 'urldate' instead.
+
+ * I've added an 'eventdate' field. This is also a date range
+ field.
+
+ USERS: You will probably need to update your bib files. The
+ changes which are most likely to cause incompatibilities are the
+ removal of the 'day' field and the modification of 'year'. Use
+ 'date' instead were required. The removal/renaming of 'origyear'
+ may also require a few changes. I doubt than many users are
+ specifying access dates using urlday+urlmonth+urlyear. Since
+ 'urldate' has been extended but not modified in an incompatible
+ way, this change should be fairly transparent.
+
+ AUTHORS: The way the date components are made available to styles
+ has not changed. For example, the components of the publication
+ date are available as day/month/year no matter whether they were
+ given in the 'date' field or in 'year' and 'month'. In sum,
+ 'date'-like fields are split up as follows:
+
+ *.bib file style interface
+ ------------------ ------------------
+
+ date day
+ month
+ year
+ endday
+ endmonth
+ endyear
+
+ origdate origday
+ origmonth
+ origyear
+ origendday
+ origendmonth
+ origendyear
+
+ eventdate eventday
+ eventmonth
+ eventyear
+ eventendday
+ eventendmonth
+ eventendyear
+
+ urldate urlday
+ urlmonth
+ urlyear
+ urlendday
+ urlendmonth
+ urlendyear
+
+ Fields related to date components which are not available are
+ undefined. E.g.:
+
+ date = {1988} -> day = undefined
+ month = undefined
+ year = "1988"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = undefined
+
+ urldate = {2009-01-31}
+ -> urlday = "31"
+ urlmonth = "01"
+ urlyear = "2009"
+ urlendday = undefined
+ urlendmonth = undefined
+ urlendyear = undefined
+
+ origdate = {2002-01/2002-02}
+ -> origday = undefined
+ origmonth = "01"
+ origyear = "2002"
+ origendday = undefined
+ origendmonth = "02"
+ origendyear = "2002"
+
+ eventdate = {1995-01-31/1995-02-05}
+ -> eventday = "31"
+ eventmonth = "01"
+ eventyear = "1995"
+ eventendday = "05"
+ eventendmonth = "02"
+ eventendyear = "1995"
+
+ If there is no 'date' field, biblatex will consider the legacy
+ fields 'month' and 'year'. E.g.:
+
+ year = {1988} -> day = undefined
+ month = undefined
+ year = "1988"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = undefined
+
+ year = {1993} -> day = undefined
+ month = {5} month = "05"
+ year = "1993"
+ endday = undefined
+ endmonth = undefined
+ endyear = undefined
+
+ When printing a single date component in a style, use the field
+ names listed in the 'style interface' column above (e.g.,
+ "\printfield{origmonth}"). There is no 'date' field on the style
+ level. However, there is normally no need to fiddle with the date
+ component fields directly. See the next point for details.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Modified date interface
+
+ The high-level date interface has been revised. The commands
+ \bibdate and \biburldate have been renamed and improved. Here's a
+ list of the new high-level commands:
+
+ \printdate
+ \printurldate
+ \printorigdate
+ \printeventdate
+
+ These commands print the respective date, handle ranges, and
+ localize the output format. For example, if the publication date
+ is a plain year, then \printdate will only print the year. If
+ it's a full date, it will print all date components which are
+ available. If it's a range, it will format the range. The
+ high-level commands need not be wrapped in a \printtext command.
+
+ USERS: The change is relevant for style authors only. The standard
+ styles have been updated.
+
+ AUTHORS: Where your style has code like:
+
+ \bibdate
+ or \printtext{\bibdate}
+
+ and
+
+ \biburldate
+ or \printtext{\biburldate}
+
+ use
+
+ \printdate
+
+ and
+
+ \printurldate
+
+ instead. Use \printorigdate and \printeventdate to handle the new
+ 'origdate' and 'eventdate' fields.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Modified 'labelyear'
+
+ Adding support for date ranges has prompted a refactoring of the
+ 'labelyear' mechanism. Essentially, I've renamed the existing
+ 'labelyear' field to 'extrayear' and re-added a new 'labelyear'
+ field with a different role. The 'maxlabelyear' counter has been
+ renamed to 'maxextrayear'. The new mechanism is consistent with
+ labelalpha/extraalpha, e.g., 'labelyear' holds the bare year (or
+ year range) and 'extrayear' indicates the extra letter used for
+ disambiguation (as an integer).
+
+ The new 'labelyear' field holds the year components of the 'date'
+ field, readily formatted using \bibdatedash as a range separator.
+ Identical year components in a date range are detected
+ automatically. If there is no 'date' field, the 'year' field will
+ be considered instead. Here are some examples:
+
+ date = {2003}
+ -> labelyear = "2003"
+
+ date = {1995-01-31/1995-02-05}
+ -> labelyear = "1995"
+
+ date = {1995/1998}
+ -> labelyear = "1995\bibdatedash 1998"
+
+ date = {1998-12-27/1999-01-03}
+ -> labelyear = "1998\bibdatedash 1999"
+
+ year = {2005}
+ -> labelyear = "2005"
+
+ If there is neither a 'date' nor a 'year' field then 'labelyear'
+ will be undefined.
+
+ USERS: The change is relevant for style authors only. The standard
+ styles have been updated.
+
+ AUTHORS: Where your style has code like:
+
+ \printfield{year}%
+ \printfield{labelyear}%
+
+ use this:
+
+ \printfield{labelyear}%
+ \printfield{extrayear}%
+
+ instead. If you want to concatenate 'extrayear' and the (full)
+ publication date in the bibliography, use:
+
+ \printdateextra
+
+ \printdateextra is similar to \printdate but incorporates the
+ 'extrayear' in the date specification.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Revised date localization
+
+ The way date specifications are localized in lbx files has been
+ refactored. Only \DeclareBibliographyExtras declarations in *.lbx
+ files are affected by this change.
+
+ Basically, the commands:
+
+ \bibdatelong
+ \bibdateshort
+ \biburldatelong
+ \biburldateshort
+
+ have been removed and are replaced by the generic commands:
+
+ \mkbibdatelong
+ \mkbibdateshort
+
+ The new commands take three arguments (three field names) and
+ arrange them as required by the respective language/locale. The
+ new system is more easily extensible.
+
+ USERS: The change is relevant for style authors only. The standard
+ styles have been updated.
+
+ AUTHORS: Even though this point is tagged as 'caveat', it's
+ rather unlikely that it will cause any trouble. The change is
+ only relevant for style authors who a) ship custom lbx files (or
+ users who have adapted some of the stock lbx files) and b) have
+ modified the 'extras' (as opposed to inheriting them form the
+ stock modules).
+
+* Added/extended package options for date formats
+
+ There are now four date formats to choose from: short, long,
+ terse, comp. terse and comp are like short and long but render
+ date ranges in a more compact format.
+
+* Support for multiple editorial roles
+
+ This release adds three additional fields (data type: name list)
+ for secondary editors: 'editora', 'editorb', 'editorc'. There are
+ also matching 'editor*type' fields. Biblatex now supports up to
+ four distinct editoral roles, e.g.:
+
+ editor = {Eddy Editor}
+ editora = {Freddy Founder}
+ editoratype = {founder}
+ editorb = {Cory Continuator}
+ editorbtype = {continuator}
+ editorc = {Rudy Redactor}
+ editorctype = {redactor}
+
+ USERS: The new fields are fully supported by the standard styles.
+
+ AUTHORS: The catch-all 'byeditor+others' macro in biblatex.def
+ has been updated to incorporate the new fields. The 'byeditor'
+ macro will consider them as well. There's also a dedicated
+ 'byeditorx' macro which processes the 'editor[a-c]' lists. In
+ other words: if your style relies of the ready-made macros in
+ biblatex.def, it will consider the new fields automatically. If
+ not, have a look at biblatex.def to get an idea of how to
+ incorporate them in your style.
+
+* [CAVEAT] 'redactor' now an editorial role
+
+ The field 'redactor' has been removed because the redactor is now
+ an editorial role, i.e.:
+
+ editor = {Eddy Editor}
+ redactor = {Rudy Redactor}
+
+ becomes:
+
+ editor = {Eddy Editor}
+ editora = {Rudy Redactor}
+ editoratype = {redactor}
+
+ USERS: You may need to update some of your bib files.
+
+ AUTHORS: The 'byredactor' macro has been removed from
+ biblatex.def because this role is now handled by the
+ editor-related macros mentioned above.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Revised lbx files, simplyfied role concatenation
+
+ I've simplyfied the role concatenation somewhat. Concatenation is
+ now only supported if the primary role is 'editor' (i.e., if the
+ 'editortype' field is undefined or holds the string 'editor'). It
+ turned out to be too painful to support concatenation for all
+ kinds of editorial roles (compiler, redactor, founder, etc.) in
+ all languages. This will also make the lbx files much more
+ readable and the whole apparatus easier to understand.
+
+ It's all a bit difficult to describe but fairly easy to grasp if
+ you take a look at the strings in the lbx files. Essentially,
+ biblatex 0.8 would define fragmentary type* and bytype* snippets:
+
+ typeeditor = {{editor}{...}},
+ typecompiler = {{compiler}{...}},
+ bytypeeditor = {{edited}{...}},
+ bytypecompiler = {{compiled}{...}},
+
+ The full strings would then be assembled by auxiliary macros
+ which insert the type* and bytype* snippets into the string
+ definitions:
+
+ editor = {{\lbx@typeeditor}{...}},
+ editortr = {{\lbx@typeeditor\ and translator}{...}},
+ byeditor = {{\lbx@bytypeeditor\ by}{...}},
+ byeditortr = {{\lbx@bytypeeditor\ and translated \lbx@fromlang\ by}{...}},
+
+ These are the simplified strings in biblatex >=0.9:
+
+ editor = {{editor}{...}},
+ compiler = {{compiler}{...}},
+ editortr = {{editor and translator}{...}},
+ byeditor = {{edited by}{...}},
+ bycompiler = {{compiled by}{...}},
+ byeditortr = {{edited and translated \lbx@fromlang\ by}{...}},
+
+ The old scheme was admittedly more elegant but it simply didn't
+ work quite right in all languages.
+
+* Notes on the basic structure of role processing in biblatex.def
+
+ The following hints may help you to find your way around the
+ ready-made macros and definitions in biblatex.def.
+
+ Essentially, a role like 'editor' may be expressed as a function
+ or as an action, e.g.:
+
+ Bernard Bookmaker, editor, Title, ... [function]
+ ... Title, edited by Bernard Bookmaker [action]
+
+ Roles which are related to supplementary material in a book, such
+ as a commentary or annotations, may also be expressed as an
+ object:
+
+ ... Title, annotated by Edward Expert [action]
+ ... Title, with annotations by Edward Expert [object]
+
+ In biblatex.def, the names of the ready-made macros correspond to
+ name formats and localization keys:
+
+ Macros like editor/translator print a role as a function.
+ They use
+ - name formats like editor/translator and
+ - strings like editor/translator.
+
+ Macros like byeditor/bytranslator print a role as an action.
+ They use
+ - name formats like byeditor/bytranslator and
+ - strings like byeditor/bytranslator.
+
+ Macros like withcommentator/withannotator print a role as an
+ object. They use
+ - name formats like withcommentator/withannotator and
+ - strings like withcommentator/withannotator.
+
+ For example, the bibmacro 'editor' essentially boils down to the
+ following code:
+
+ \printnames{editor} = \printnames[editor]{editor}
+ \bibstring{editor}
+
+ The 'byeditor' macro boils down to:
+
+ \bibstring{byeditor}
+ \printnames[byeditor]{editor}
+
+ and the 'withannotator' macro to:
+
+ \bibstring{withannotator}
+ \printnames[withannotator]{annotator}
+
+ The real code is more complex because it needs to take
+ punctuation and additional parameters into account (such as the
+ 'editortype' field, role concatenation, etc.) but this is the
+ basic idea.
+
+* [CAVEAT] Revised indexing controls
+
+ The way the indexing facilities are configured has been revised
+ and modified. In previous releases, the 'indexing' option would
+ enable and disable commands like \indexfield on a low level.
+ Starting with this release, the indexing commands are always
+ operational. The 'indexing' option controls two new tests called
+ \ifciteindex and \ifbibindex which should be used as explicit
+ tests.
+
+ In the standard styles, indexing is handled by two bibmacros
+ called 'citeindex' and 'bibindex'. The old definition was:
+
+ \newbibmacro*{citeindex}{%
+ \indexnames{labelname}%
+ \indexfield{indextitle}}
+
+ \newbibmacro*{bibindex}{%
+ \indexnames{labelname}%
+ \indexfield{indextitle}}
+
+ The new one is:
+
+ \newbibmacro*{bibindex}{%
+ \ifbibindex
+ {\indexnames{labelname}%
+ \indexfield{indextitle}}
+ {}}
+
+ \newbibmacro*{citeindex}{%
+ \ifciteindex
+ {\indexnames{labelname}%
+ \indexfield{indextitle}}
+ {}}
+
+ The point of this change is to make commands like \indexfield
+ useable in a more flexible way, regardless of the setting of the
+ 'indexing' option. Since they are always operational now, you can
+ use them for tasks which require access to the bibliographic data
+ but do not print anything, such as setting page headers or
+ writing data to some external file.
+
+ It is not advisable to use commands like \printfield for this
+ purpose because they interface with the punctuation tracker. Use
+ \printfield if you really want to print a field and \indexfield
+ for other tasks, indexing obviously being the most common
+ application.
+
+ USERS: From a user's point of view, the new mechanism works like
+ the old one.
+
+ AUTHORS: Standard citation commands like \cite should always use
+ the above bibmacros (citeindex/bibindex) anyway so no change is
+ required. You may need to incorporate the \ifciteindex and
+ \ifbibindex tests into text citation commands (i.e., commands
+ like \citeauthor and \citetitle) if you have redefined the
+ standard ones or provide additional ones. All predefined commands
+ in biblatex.def have been updated.
+
+* Fallback drivers
+
+ Biblatex now supports the fallback entry type "*". If you use the
+ asterisk as the type argument of \DeclareBibliographyDriver or
+ \DeclareBibliographyAlias, the driver or alias will be used as a
+ fallback if no specific driver for a certain type has been
+ defined. E.g.:
+
+ \DeclareBibliographyDriver{*}{<driver code>}
+ \DeclareBibliographyAlias{*}{misc}
+
+* Manual language selection
+
+ By default, biblatex detects the babel package if it is loaded
+ and can adjust to the selected babel language automatically.
+ Using the new 'language' package option, you can now force
+ biblatex to load support for a certain language. This will
+ implicitly disable babel support and on-the-fly language
+ switching. The 'babel' package option is ignored in this case.
+
+ This is mainly useful if you can't use babel for some reason.
+ Using the automatic babel interface is usually preferable.
+
+* Improved \defbibheading, introducing 'title' option
+
+ I've extended \defbibheading and added a 'title' option to
+ \printbibliography and \printshorthands. These extensions are
+ mainly useful for subdivided bibliographies.
+
+ This is best explained by example. With previous biblatex
+ releases, subdivided bibliographies required one heading
+ definition for each subsection since the heading definition
+ included both the format and the text of the heading:
+
+ \defbibheading{books}{\section*{Books}}
+ \defbibheading{articles}{\section*{Articles}}
+ \defbibheading{online}{\section*{Online Resources}}
+
+ \chapter{\bibname}
+ \printbibliography[type=book,heading=books]
+ \printbibliography[type=article,heading=articles]
+ \printbibliography[type=online,heading=online]
+
+ When using the extended syntax of \defbibheading, the heading
+ definition only controls the format but the title may be
+ specified by using the 'title' option of \printbibliography and
+ \printshorthands. The value of this option will be passed to the
+ heading definition as paramater #1. The new optional argument of
+ \defbibheading defines the default text which is passed as #1 if
+ there is no 'title' option.
+
+ \defbibheading{subdiv}[\bibname]{\section*{#1}}
+
+ \chapter{\bibname}
+ \printbibliography[type=book,heading=subdiv,title={Books}]
+ \printbibliography[type=article,heading=subdiv,title={Articles}]
+ \printbibliography[type=online,heading=subdiv,title={Online Resources}]
+
+ Since biblatex provides a predefined heading called
+ 'subbibliography' you don't even need \defbibheading in this
+ case. You can simply use 'heading=subbibliography', specify
+ 'title={...}', and rely on the predefined heading definitions
+ provided by biblatex which support the standard LaTeX classes,
+ the KOMA-Script classes, and the memoir class automatically.
+
+ The extensions are backwards-compatible. It is still possible to
+ use the parameterless form of \defbibheading. Such headings will
+ work as expected but the 'title' option of \printbibliography and
+ \printshorthands will obviously be ignored in this case.
+
+* More options for \printshorthands, subdivided LOS
+
+ I've added more options to \printshorthands. It now supports the
+ same options as \printbibliography. This is useful for a
+ subdivided list of shorthands.
+
+* Improved author-title and author-year citation styles
+
+ I've improved the compact citation styles authortitle-comp,
+ authortitle-icomp, authortitle-tcomp, and authoryear-comp. The
+ compact format is now supported in multicite commands as well.
+
+* New verbose-trad3 style
+
+ This style is similar in concept to verbose-trad2 with a slightly
+ different treatment of ibidem and op. cit.
+
+* Eprint support for Google Books/JSTOR/PubMed
+
+ I've added eprint handlers for Google Books, JSTOR, and PubMed.
+ This means that, instead of
+
+ url = {http://books.google.com/books?id=XXu4AkRVBBoC},
+
+ you may also use:
+
+ eprint = {XXu4AkRVBBoC},
+ eprinttype = {googlebooks},
+
+ PubMed support is similar. Instead of specifying the full URL
+ (where <pmid> is the unique and stable PubMed ID):
+
+ url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/<pmid>},
+
+ you may also say:
+
+ eprint = {<pmid>},
+ eprinttype = {pubmed},
+
+ By default, this will be printed as "PMID: <pmid>" in the
+ bibliography. If hyperref support is enabled, the <pmid> will be
+ a clickable link to PubMed.
+
+ JSTOR support works exactly like PubMed. When using JSTOR's
+ export feature to export citations in BibTeX format, JSTOR uses
+ the 'url' field by default (where <number> is a unique
+ and stable identifier):
+
+ url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/<number>}
+
+ While this will work as expected, full URLs tend to clutter the
+ bibliography. You may also use:
+
+ eprint = {<number>},
+ eprinttype = {jstor},
+
+ to get the more readable "JSTOR: <number>" format which also
+ supports hyperlinks (the <number> becomes a clickable link).
+
+* More styles for compressed back references
+
+ See 'backrefstyle' in the changelog.
+
+* Improved endnotes, added \pagenote support
+
+ The \pagenote command, which is provided by the pagenote package
+ and the memoir class, is now supported by \mkbibendnote.
+ \mkbibendnote prioritizes as follows:
+
+ 1) check for \endnote and use it if available
+ 2) check for \pagenote and use it if available
+ 3) issue a warning and fall back to \footnote
+
+ There is also a new 'notetype' option which you may use to
+ convert footnotes to endnotes and vice versa (provided that
+ they are generated with \mkbibfootnote and \mkbibendnote,
+ respectively; the standard \footnote and \endnote commands will
+ not be modified).
+
+* Compatibility with UCS package
+
+ Previous releases of biblatex were comptabile with inputenc's
+ standard UTF-8 module but wouldn't work with the ucs package. This
+ release also supports ucs. XeLaTeX's native UTF-8 support should
+ also work fine. If you're using UTF-8 encoding you should be
+ using Biber instead of BibTeX as a backend.
+
+* Dutch support
+
+ This release comes with a dutch.lbx file. The translations have
+ been contributed by Alexander van Loon.
+
+* Greek support
+
+ As of this release, biblatex speaks Greek, too. The translations
+ have been contributed by Apostolos Syropoulos. Note that the
+ greek.lbx file requires UTF-8 support. Biblatex generally works
+ with
+
+ 1) LaTeX and inputenc:
+
+ \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
+
+ 2) LaTeX and inputenc+ucs:
+
+ \usepackage{ucs}
+ \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
+
+ 3) XeLaTeX
+
+ Since inputenc's standard utf8 module has no glyph mappings for
+ Greek, this leaves Greek users with a choice of 2) or 3). If you
+ choose 2), make sure to preload the Greek Unicode range:
+
+ \usepackage{ucs}
+ \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
+ \PreloadUnicodePage{3}
+
+ You may also use \PrerenderUnicode if you prefer that. See the
+ section about "Known problems" in the UCS (!) manual for
+ explanation. You may also need to load additional packages which
+ set up Greek fonts. As a rule of thumb, any setup which works with
+ regular Greek documents should also work with biblatex.
+
+ However, there is one fundamental limitation. As of this writing,
+ biblatex has no support for mixing scripts. Bibliographies in
+ Greek should work fine, provided that you use Biber as a backend,
+ but English and other titles in the bibliography may be rendered
+ in Greek letters.
+
+ The problem with using LaTeX and macro-level UTF-8 support via
+ inputenc/ucs is that processing still happens in an 8-bit
+ environment. The inputenc/ucs packages can decode all of UTF-8,
+ but in order to typeset Unicode all input needs to be mapped to
+ segments of 256 glyphs each because LaTeX only supports 8-bit
+ output encodings. If you need multi-script bibliographies,
+ XeLaTeX is the only sensible choice since XeTeX uses Unicode all
+ the way from input to output.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8i
+
+This is a bug fix release. There are no new features and the manual
+has not been updated.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8h
+
+This is a bug fix release. There are no new features and the manual
+has not been updated.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8g
+
+This is a bug fix release. There are no new features and the manual
+has not been updated.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8f
+
+This is a bug fix release. There are no new features and the manual
+has not been updated.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8e
+
+* Improved concatenation of roles
+
+ The standard styles (and the ready-made macros in biblatex.def)
+ have been supporting the concatenation of (editorial and other)
+ roles for some time. For example, if the editor and the
+ translator of a book are the same person, the roles are
+ concatenated and the name is given only once:
+
+ Author, Title, ed. and trans. by Editor, ...
+
+ However, if there is no author and the editor moves to the first
+ position, the name was, until now, printed twice:
+
+ Editor, ed., Title, trans. by Editor, ...
+
+ The improved bibliography styles now support concatenation in
+ this case as well:
+
+ Editor, ed. and trans., Title, ...
+
+ Since the macros which handle the concatenation are defined in
+ biblatex.def, adding this feature to existing styles is simple.
+ Where your style has code like:
+
+ \usebibmacro{editor}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor}
+
+ simply replace that with:
+
+ \usebibmacro{editor+others}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor+others}
+
+ The improvements also cover additional roles of the translator.
+ To take advantage of that, replace code like:
+
+ \usebibmacro{translator}
+ \usebibmacro{author/translator}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor/translator}
+
+ with:
+
+ \usebibmacro{translator+others}
+ \usebibmacro{author/translator+others}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor+others/translator+others}
+
+ On a related note, it is safe to use code like this:
+
+ \usebibmacro{editor+others}%
+ \newunit
+ \printfield{title}%
+ \newunit
+ \usebibmacro{byeditor+others}%
+
+ because macros like 'editor+others' macro will use \clearname to
+ clear all name lists already processed. For example, if the
+ 'editor+others' macro prints 'ed. and trans.', it locally clears
+ the 'editor' and 'translator' lists afterwards. The
+ 'byeditor+others' macro will not print them a second time. It
+ simply takes care of any names/roles not covered yet
+ (commentator, annotator, etc.), if there are any left.
+
+* Added some new localization keys, removed some existing ones
+
+ The above concatenation requires a whole set of new localization
+ keys (see the manual for details). These keys are initialized by
+ default. English and German translations are already available,
+ the other localization modules need an update.
+
+ The new strings are also useful for styles which use the 'first
+ position' format in all cases, i.e., styles which print:
+
+ Editor, ed. and trans., Title, ...
+ Author, Title, in: Editor, ed. and trans., Book, ...
+
+ instead of:
+
+ Editor, ed. and trans., Title, ...
+ Author, Title, in: Book, ed. and trans. by Editor, ...
+
+ Since the number of localization keys keeps increasing, I've
+ removed some of the rarely used 'country...', 'patent...', and
+ 'patreq...' keys. Only about half a dozen keys in each of these
+ groups is left, mainly to illustrate the underlying scheme.
+
+* New auxiliary macros for ordinals
+
+ In the past, some localization modules have been redefining the
+ field formats 'edition' and 'series' because they require
+ ordinals and need to be adapted to use either \mkbibmascord or
+ \mkbibfemord if ordinals are gender specific in the respective
+ language. However, having lbx files redefine field formats is
+ rather intrusive.
+
+ Starting with this release, there's a new, non-intrusive
+ solution. Biblatex provides two new macros, \mkbibordedition and
+ \mkbibordseries, which should be used in the respective field
+ formats. Where required (typically in Romanic languages), these
+ macros are redefined by localization modules such that they point
+ to \mkbibmascord or \mkbibfemord.
+
+* Extended language support: Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish revised
+
+ This release adds support for Brazilian Portuguese and
+ preliminary support for Portuguese/Portugal. The translations
+ have been contributed by Augusto Ritter Stoffel.
+
+ The Portuguese support in portuguese.lbx is mostly inherited from
+ brazilian.lbx. This file needs review by a native speaker from
+ Portugal.
+
+ I've also added some revised Swedish translations which Per
+ Starb\"ack sent in some time ago to the Swedish module.
+
+* German localization now using "Hrsg."
+
+ By popular request, the German module now uses the abbreviations
+ "Hrsg./hrsg. von" instead of "Hg./hg. von". Both forms are valid,
+ but most users seem to prefer the more traditional "Hrsg".
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8d
+
+* Biber beta release
+
+ Biber is a BibTeX replacement written in Perl. It features
+ Unicode support and has been designed with the requirements of
+ biblatex in mind. See:
+
+ http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/
+
+ for details. Beta testers are invited to try it out and report
+ any bugs on Biber's SourceForge project page.
+
+* Package option 'bibtex8' superseded by 'backend'
+
+ The package option 'bibtex8' is superseded by a new option called
+ 'backend'. The old option is not mentioned in the manual any
+ more, but it is still supported for the sake of backwards
+ compatibility. In new documents, however, replace it as follows:
+
+ bibtex8=false -> backend=bibtex (default setting, omissible)
+ bibtex8=true -> backend=bibtex8
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8c
+
+* Added 'idem' tracker
+
+ I've added an 'idem' tracker which is similar in concept to the
+ 'ibidem' tracker except that it checks for recurrent author/
+ editor names. See the 'idemtracker' package option and the
+ \ifciteidem test in the manual.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8b
+
+* Added 'usetranslator' option
+
+ The 'usetranslator' option is similar in concept to 'useauthor'
+ and 'useeditor' hence usage should be fairly obvious. Style
+ authors should note that styles derived from the standard ones
+ will support this option if you replace
+
+ \usebibmacro{author}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor}
+
+ with
+
+ \usebibmacro{author/translator}
+ \usebibmacro{author/editor/translator}
+
+ in all relevant drivers.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8a
+
+* SourceForge bug/feature trackers
+
+ The user base of biblatex has been growing steadily, reaching a
+ point where managing bug reports and feature requests by a
+ combination of private email messages and Usenet postings has
+ become impractical. I've therefore set up a project page on
+ SourceForge:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex/
+
+ There's no code on that site and most tools offered by
+ SourceForge (like cvs/subversion, web-based forums, etc.) are
+ currently disabled. The interesting thing are the trackers:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?group_id=244752
+
+ I've set up two trackers, 'Bugs' for bug reports and 'Features'
+ for feature requests. Please use these trackers to report bugs
+ and submit feature requests.
+
+ I've also added all open bug reports and feature requests sitting
+ in my email inbox but I may have missed some messages posted in
+ public forums. If you've reported anything which doesn't show up
+ on the project page, you can now add it yourself by selecting the
+ appropriate tracker and clicking on "Add new artifact".
+
+* Custom localization modules
+
+ This release adds support for custom localization modules. The
+ point is that styles may ship modified lbx files. See
+ \DeclareLanguageMapping and the changelog for further hints.
+
+* Configurable punctuation tracker
+
+ The behavior of punctuation commands like \addcomma is now
+ configurable. See \DeclarePunctuationPairs in the manual.
+
+* Improved 'American-style' punctuation
+
+ I've improved the 'American-style' punctuation feature.
+ american.lbx now uses \DeclarePunctuationPairs to adapt the
+ punctuation tracker and \mkbibquote supports nested quotes even
+ if American punctuation is enabled.
+
+* Sentence case vs. title case
+
+ By popular request, I've added a macro which converts a string to
+ sentence case. See \MakeSentenceCase, \MakeSentenceCase*, and
+ \DeclareCaseLangs in the manual. \MakeSentenceCase supports the
+ BibTeX convention that anything wrapped in braces is not altered
+ when changing the case.
+
+ Style authors who make use of the bibmacros in biblatex.def should
+ note the following. Saying:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\MakeSentenceCase{#1}}
+
+ will not work as expected. That's because biblatex uses macros
+ like this one by default:
+
+ \newbibmacro*{title}{%
+ \ifthenelse{\iffieldundef{title}\AND\iffieldundef{subtitle}}
+ {}
+ {\printtext[title]{%
+ \printfield[noformat]{title}%
+ \setunit{\subtitlepunct}%
+ \printfield[noformat]{subtitle}}%
+ \newunit}%
+ \printfield{titleaddon}}
+
+ The 'title' format is applied by a \printtext command which
+ encloses both the title and the subtitle. \MakeSentenceCase would
+ therefore see \printfield commands rather than the field
+ contents. If you want to convert all titles to sentence case,
+ \MakeSentenceCase must be applied on the inner level, by the
+ \printfield commands. To facilitate that, I've modified this and
+ similar bibmacros slightly:
+
+ \newbibmacro*{title}{%
+ \ifthenelse{\iffieldundef{title}\AND\iffieldundef{subtitle}}
+ {}
+ {\printtext[title]{%
+ \printfield[titlecase]{title}%
+ \setunit{\subtitlepunct}%
+ \printfield[titlecase]{subtitle}}%
+ \newunit}%
+ \printfield{titleaddon}}
+
+ Instead of 'noformat', the nested \printfield commands now use
+ 'titlecase' on the inner level. These formats are defined like
+ this:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{#1}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{noformat}{#1}
+
+ In other words, the default behavior remains unchanged but
+ converting all titles to sentence case is as easy as saying:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{\MakeSentenceCase{#1}}
+
+ You can apply additional formats on a higher level as usual:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}
+
+ Just make sure that \MakeSentenceCase always hooks in on the
+ innermost level such that it sees the raw field contents rather
+ then data commands or other formatting commands.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.8
+
+As usual, the full changelog is included in biblatex.pdf. What
+follows are comments concerning changes 'under the hood' which are
+not mentioned in the changelog, things which may break backwards
+compatibility, improvements which may not be immediately obvious
+from looking at the changelog, and new major features which pertain
+to a set of entries in the changelog rather than a single one.
+
+The changelog and the release notes include changes made in the
+0.7a-g maintenance releases. If you have been tracking the
+development closely, some things may sound familiar.
+
+Note that there have been changes in the LaTeX<->BibTeX data
+interface. You may want to delete all the old *.bbl and
+<jobname>-blx.bib files before you start using the new version. In
+fact biblatex should be able to handle the update on its own but
+this will require an additional LaTeX+BibTeX cycle. In other words,
+you need to go through one LaTeX/BibTeX/LaTeX cycle to update all
+auxiliary files. You can ignore any warnings printed in this
+process. After that, the output should stabilize as usual.
+
+* Hints for style developers
+
+ I'm delighted to see that the first custom biblatex styles start
+ showing up on CTAN.
+
+ One general note to style authors: unless your style is only a
+ minor modification of one of the standard styles which ship with
+ biblatex, it's a good idea to make sure it's self-contained,
+ i.e., that it doesn't employ \RequireCitationStyle and/or
+ \RequireBibliographyStyle to load code from the default styles
+ (but feel free to incorporate code by copying it to your style).
+
+ While the core of biblatex is stable by now, there's still
+ potential for modifications in the standard styles (see below for
+ examples). Having said that, loading standard.bbx should be a
+ safe thing to do and you can also rely on code in biblatex.def
+ because this file is part of the core of biblatex.
+
+* New citation and bibliography styles
+
+ I've added some new styles: 'authoryear-ibid' (an author-year
+ style with an 'ibidem' feature), 'draft' (which is a, well, draft
+ style), and 'reading' (a style for annotated bibliographies and
+ personal reading lists with abstracts, annotations, etc.).
+
+* Overhaul of all citation and bibliography styles
+
+ I've overhauled all styles such that they use LaTeX (=etoolbox)
+ rather than plain TeX syntax for the boolean switches. E.g.,
+ instead of:
+
+ \newif\ifcbx@bool
+ \cbx@booltrue
+ \ifcbx@bool ...\else ...\fi
+
+ they now use:
+
+ \newbool{cbx:bool}
+ \booltrue{cbx:bool}
+ \ifbool{cbx:bool}{...}{...}
+
+ This LaTeX frontend is provided by the etoolbox package.
+
+* Improved authoryear styles
+
+ The authoryear styles have been improved such that they will
+ consider the '(short)title' field if the author/editor is
+ missing (or useauthor/useeditor=false is set). Note that these
+ styles also consider the 'label' field, if available. In sum,
+ the fallback chain in citations used to be:
+
+ author -> editor -> label -> [issue warning]
+
+ and the new chain works as follows:
+
+ author -> editor -> label -> shorttitle -> title
+
+ The 'shorthand' field, if defined, always takes precedence over
+ any other data.
+
+* Improved verbose-note styles
+
+ The styles verbose-note and verbose-inote can now add a page
+ number to the reference pointing to the initial, full citation.
+ There is a style option named 'pageref' which enables this
+ feature. The page reference is only printed if the initial
+ citation is located on a different page or page spread (depending
+ on the setting of the 'pagetracker' option).
+
+* Improved numeric styles
+
+ The numeric styles now support citations referring to set
+ members. See the note about reference sets below, the manual, and
+ the examples for details.
+
+* Introducing reference sets
+
+ This release introduces the concept of a reference or entry set.
+ A reference set is a group of entries which are cited as a single
+ reference and listed as a single item in the bibliography. I'm
+ told that this is a matter of particular interest for users in
+ physics, chemistry, and possibly some other fields. See the 'set'
+ type, the 'entryset' field, and the special field 'entrysetcount'
+ in the manual. Also see \entryset and the pointers in the
+ changelog.
+
+ If you are familiar with this concept, you may have used the
+ mcite or the mciteplus package before. The mcite and mciteplus
+ manuals call this type of reference a "collapsed citation". They
+ also talk about "grouping citations". The biblatex manual calls
+ it "reference set" and "entry set". It's the same thing but note
+ that the approach is different. With mcite(plus), sets are
+ defined as they are cited for the first time. Essentially, a
+ citation like
+
+ \cite{key1,*key2,*key3}
+
+ defines a set consisting of three entries (key1, key2, key3). The
+ first entry key serves as identifier of the entire set, which may
+ subsequently be cited as \cite{key1}. With biblatex, you declare
+ sets in the bib file using the @set type, the 'entryset' field,
+ and 'entryset' reverse pointers in the child entries:
+
+ @Set{set1,
+ entryset = {key1,key2,key3},
+ crossref = {key1},
+ }
+ @Article{key1,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ ...
+ }
+ @InCollection{key2,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ ...
+ }
+ @InProceedings{key3,
+ entryset = {set1},
+ ...
+ }
+
+ See the pointers in the changelog for further explanation.
+
+* Support for electronic publishing information (eprint)
+
+ See the 'eprint' and 'eprinttype' fields and related pointers in
+ the manual. Support for electronic publishing information has
+ been added to all standard bibliography styles.
+
+ This release comes with dedicated support for arXiv references
+ which is usable out of the box and also serves as a model for
+ adding support for other resources and online archives.
+
+* Modified 'labelyear' field
+
+ The 'labelyear' field is no longer a string but an integer. The
+ conversion of the integer to a string now takes places on the
+ LaTeX side of the workflow, i.e., you'll usually have a
+ formatting directive like this:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{labelyear}{\mknumalph{#1}}
+
+ The \mknumalph command takes an integer in the range 1-702 as
+ its argument and converts it to a string as used in author-year
+ citations like "Jones 1995a". The format is:
+
+ \mknumalph{1} -> a
+ \mknumalph{26} -> z
+ \mknumalph{27} -> aa
+ \mknumalph{702} -> zz
+
+ There is also a 'maxlabelyear' counter which holds the highest
+ number found in any 'labelyear' field. This may be useful if you
+ want to print the 'labelyear' field as a number and pad it out
+ with leading zeros.
+
+* Modified 'labelalpha' field
+
+ There is a similar change concerning the 'labelalpha' field,
+ which has been split up into 'labelalpha' and 'extraalpha'. With
+ a label like "Jon95a", 'labelalpha' holds "Jon95" while the extra
+ letter is handled by 'extraalpha'. 'extraalpha' is similar to
+ 'labelyear' in that it holds an integer. The conversion of the
+ integer to a string takes places on the LaTeX side of the
+ workflow, i.e., you'll usually have a formatting directive like
+ this:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{extraalpha}{\mknumalph{#1}}
+
+ There is also a 'maxextraalpha' counter which holds the highest
+ number found in any 'extraalpha' field.
+
+* Modified/extended name hashes
+
+ Starting with this release, there are two name hash fields,
+ 'namehash' and 'fullhash'. See the manual for details.
+ Essentially, the difference is that the 'namehash' is derived
+ from the visible 'labelname' list (subject to the 'maxnames' and
+ 'minnames' options) whereas 'fullhash' is always derived from the
+ full list.
+
+ Note that the original behavior of 'namehash' in previous
+ releases used to be similar to the current behavior of
+ 'fullhash'. This has caused some confusion. The 'namehash' should
+ now be in line with the expectations of most users and style
+ authors. Those who actually want the original behavior may still
+ use the 'fullhash' field.
+
+* 'edition' field now more flexible/controllable by styles
+
+ In previous biblatex releases, 'edition' was an integer-only
+ field. The integer test was performed on the BibTeX side of the
+ workflow, in biblatex.bst. Starting with this release, the test
+ is performed on the LaTeX side, i.e., in the format definition:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{edition}{%
+ \ifinteger{#1}
+ {\mkbibordinal{#1}~\bibstring{edition}}
+ {#1}%
+ }
+
+ As you can see, the edition is printed as "Nth edition" if the
+ edition field holds an integer, and as a literal string if not.
+ This means that you can now put things like "5th, revised and
+ expanded edition" in the 'edition' field without having to resort
+ to the 'note' field. It also implies that styles get full control
+ over the 'edition' field.
+
+ Style authors who adapt this formatting directive should note
+ that ordinals are gender-specific in Romanic languages ('edition'
+ is a feminine noun in French, Italian, and Spanish, hence the
+ ordinal must be feminine as well). In addition to the default
+ definition in biblatex.def, the 'edition' field is therefore
+ adapted in french.lbx, italian.lbx, and spanish.lbx.
+
+* Support for bibliographic data in external TeX files
+
+ This release add a \printfile command which is similar to
+ \printtext but gets the text from an external file, i.e.,
+ \printfile{file.tex} boils down to \printtext{\input{file.tex}}
+ but does nothing if the file does not exist. The point of all
+ this is that styles which print the fields 'abstract' and/or
+ 'annotation' may support an alternative way of adding abstracts
+ or annotations to the bibliography. biblatex.def provides the
+ following code for that:
+
+ \newcommand*{\bibabstractprefix}{bibabstract-}
+ \newcommand*{\bibannotationprefix}{bibannotation-}
+
+ \newbibmacro*{annotation}{%
+ \iffieldundef{annotation}
+ {\printfile[annotation]{\bibannotationprefix
+ \thefield{entrykey}.tex}}%
+ {\printfield{annotation}}}
+
+ \newbibmacro*{abstract}{%
+ \iffieldundef{abstract}
+ {\printfile[abstract]{\bibabstractprefix
+ \thefield{entrykey}.tex}}%
+ {\printfield{abstract}}}
+
+ Instead of including the text in the bib file, it may now be
+ stored in an external LaTeX file. For example, instead of saying
+
+ @Article{key1,
+ abstract = {This is an abstract of entry `key1'.}
+ ...
+
+ in the bib file, you create a file named 'bibabstract-key1.tex'
+ and put the abstract in this file. The name of the external file
+ must be the entry key prefixed with 'bibabstract-' or
+ 'bibannotation-', respectively. The 'reading' style makes use of
+ this. Also note that, when using the reference code above, a field
+ in the bib file takes precedence over external files. E.g., the
+ 'reading' style will not look for 'bibabstract-key1.tex' if the
+ 'key1' entry in the bib file has an 'abstract' field.
+
+ Note that this feature needs to be enabled explicitly by setting
+ the package option 'loadfiles'. The option is disabled by default
+ for performance reasons. Using external files is strongly
+ recommended if you have long abstracts or a lot of annotations
+ since this may increase memory requirements significantly. See
+ the changelog for more pointers.
+
+* Support for 'American-style' punctuation
+
+ Biblatex finally supports 'American-style' punctuation, i.e.,
+ certain punctuation marks placed after a closing quote can be
+ moved inside the quotes automatically.
+
+ See \DeclareQuotePunctuation and \mkbibquote in the manual. The
+ 'american' and 'canadian' localization modules enable this
+ feature for periods and commas. See the hints in the manual for
+ details.
+
+* \DeclareCapitalPunctuation replaces \(Enable|Disable)CapitalAfter
+
+ The configuration commands \EnableCapitalAfter and
+ \DisableCapitalAfter have been removed and are superseded by
+ \DeclareQuotePunctuation.
+
+ \DeclareQuotePunctuation works like \EnableCapitalAfter except
+ that it takes a list of characters as its argument. The function
+ of \DisableCapitalAfter is now implicit (all characters not
+ included in the list will not trigger capitalization).
+
+ The change affects the configuration interface only. The default
+ user-level behavior of biblatex has not changed (capitalization
+ after periods, exclamation marks, questions marks; with the
+ '(n)german' and '(n)austrian' localization modules also after
+ colons).
+
+* Hyphenation exceptions in bibliography strings
+
+ This release adds an interface for definining hyphenation
+ exceptions in lbx files and/or the document preamble. See
+ \DeclareHyphenationExceptions and \DefineHyphenationExceptions
+ in the manual.
+
+* Configurable number tests
+
+ The number tests \ifnumeral and \ifnumerals, which are also used
+ by \mkpageprefix and \mkpagetotal, may be adapted. See the
+ commands \DeclareNumChars, \DeclareRangeChars, and
+ \DeclareRangeCommands for details.
+
+* Added 'firstinits' package option
+
+ By popular request, I've added a package option which switches
+ all first names to initials. Use the \iffirstinits test to query
+ its state. The test has already been incorporated into the
+ formatting directives in biblatex.def. However, authors of custom
+ styles using redefined name formatting directives may want to
+ incorporate it into their style, too.
+
+* Added high-level '\bibpagespunct' macro
+
+ \bibpagespunct is a high-level user macro similar to
+ \labelnamepunct and \subtitlepunct. As with the 'firstinits'
+ package option, it's incorporated in the standard styles so you
+ may want to do the same in custom styles.
+
+* Added some expert entry options
+
+ See the entry options 'skipbib', 'skiplos', 'skiplab', and
+ 'dataonly' in the manual.
+
+ Note that 'skiplab' and 'dataonly' are intended for hacking only!
+
+* Improved KOMA-Script and Memoir support
+
+ The headings 'bibliography' and 'shorthands' are responsive to
+ the 'bibtotoc' and 'bibtotocnumbered' class options of the 'KOMA'
+ classes now. See also \ifkomabibtotoc, \ifkomabibtotocnumbered,
+ and \ifmemoirbibintoc.
+
+* Improved natbib compatibility style
+
+ I've added some missing features to the natbib compatibility
+ style. Most notably, citation aliasing is now possible. Note that
+ this is intended for legacy files only. In newly created files,
+ it is preferable to use biblatex's 'shorthand' field.
+
+* Spaces in file names
+
+ Whether file names may or may not contain spaces generally
+ depends on whether or not the underlying TeX binary supports
+ that. This is beyond biblatex's control. If the underlying engine
+ supports it, biblatex should not have any problems with spaces in
+ a file name.
+
+ However, neither traditional BibTeX nor bibtex8 seem to be
+ capable of handling .bib files with spaces in their name. For
+ .bib files which supply bibliographic data, there is no fix short
+ of avoiding spaces in the file name. For the auxiliary .bib file
+ automatically generated by biblatex this release adds a
+ workaround. Spaces in the name of this file, which is only used
+ internally, will be converted to underscores.
+
+* New language-specific csf files for bibtex8
+
+ I've added some csf file for use with bibtex8 to the 'resources'
+ subdirectory. They implement the proper sorting order for German,
+ Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish in Latin 1, Latin 9, and Windows
+ Ansi encoding.
+
+ German users should note that even bibtex8 is not able to handle
+ the German letter \ss properly. You may need to resort to fields
+ like 'sortname' and 'sorttitle' even when using these csf files.
+
+* Extended manual
+
+ In addition to the usual manual updates related to new features,
+ I've also added some new material to the 'hints and caveats'
+ section in the author guide of the manual.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.7
+
+The changelog of this release is the longest list of changes in any
+biblatex release so far. Skimming the full list in biblatex.pdf is
+highly recommended. In the following, I will focus on changes 'under
+the hood' which are not mentioned in the changelog, point out things
+which may break backwards compatibility, and comment on some
+improvements which may not be immediately obvious from looking at
+the changelog because they pertain to a set of changes rather than a
+single one.
+
+* User and author interface stable
+
+ Starting with this release, the user and author interface of this
+ package may be considered as stable. This means that I will try
+ to refrain from making syntactically or functionally incompatible
+ changes to the core package, unless I'm forced to do so because
+ of a bug or because one of the most recently added features turns
+ out to be really awkward. Essentially, citation and bibliography
+ styles written for this version should work with biblatex 1.0
+ with no or at most minor modifications.
+
+ Please note that this is a development aim, but there is no
+ guarantee. Also note that the definitions in biblatex.def (mainly
+ the formatting directives) are not guaranteed to be stable at
+ this point. In other words: if you use the default definitions,
+ your style will inherit possible improvements in future versions.
+ If you use modified formatting directives, you may need to update
+ them to integrate new functions. That should be fairly easy,
+ though.
+
+* CTAN staging area for biblatex styles
+
+ There's a new location for contributed biblatex styles, it's:
+
+ macros/latex/exptl/biblatex-contrib/
+
+ Contributed styles should go into a subdirectory of the above
+ location. E.g., a style called 'MLA' would go into:
+
+ macros/latex/exptl/biblatex-contrib/mla/
+
+ Note that the exptl/ subtree is intended for experimental or beta
+ code. As soon as biblatex hits 1.0 and moves out of exptl/ to
+
+ macros/latex/biblatex/
+
+ there's be a corresponding biblatex-contrib. At this point, all
+ contributed styles should be considered experimental because the
+ core package is still in beta.
+
+* Removed biblatex.cbx and biblatex.bbx
+
+ I've removed the files biblatex.cbx and biblatex.bbx from the
+ distribution. The code formerly found in biblatex.cbx has been
+ moved to biblatex.def. The code formerly found in biblatex.bbx
+ has been split up. The most generic parts have been moved to
+ biblatex.def. The less generic parts, which are closely tied to
+ biblatex's standard bibliography style, are now part of
+ standard.bbx.
+
+ I've also rearranged some of the bibmacros formerly found in the
+ above files and renamed some of them. If you have been using some
+ of that code in a custom bibliography style, don't worry, all the
+ code is still there, but parts of it may be arranged differently
+ (e.g., a bibmacro may have been split up into two macros or two
+ macro may have been merged into one) and the names of some
+ bibmacros may have changed.
+
+ Note that biblatex.def is always loaded, but standard.bbx is not.
+ If you have been using code which is now part of standard.bbx in
+ a custom bibliography style, you need to copy the relevant parts
+ to your style.
+
+* New dependency on etoolbox.sty
+
+ Some of the most generic parts of biblatex.sty have been moved to
+ an independent package called 'etoolbox', which is now required.
+ The package is available from CTAN and may also be useful for
+ style authors.
+
+* Type-specific formatting directives
+
+ All formatting directives may now be defined on a per-type basis;
+ e.g.:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}
+
+ would define the format of the 'title' field of @article entries
+ only. The fallback mechanism for formats now works as follows.
+ The command \printfield{title}, when used in an @article driver,
+ would check for the following formats (in this order):
+
+ title [article]
+ title
+ default
+
+ This also applies to cases where a specific formatting directive
+ is requested explicitly, i.e. \printfield[myformat]{title}, would
+ check for these formats:
+
+ myformat [article]
+ myformat
+ default
+
+ The point is that you can override formats on a per-type basis
+ without having to hack any drivers.
+
+* Truncation with 'and others' now supported by literal lists
+
+ Truncating a list with 'and others' in the .bib file is now
+ supported by both name lists and literal lists. This used to be
+ specific to name lists. See \ifandothers and \ifmoreitems as well
+ as \finallistdelim and \andmoredelim for details.
+
+* Introducing entry options and style-specific options
+
+ This release introduces the concept of an entry option and a new
+ 'options' field. The 'useprefix' field has been replaced by an
+ entry option. Instead of:
+
+ useprefix = {true}
+
+ you now use
+
+ options = {useprefix=true}
+
+ There are two more predefined entry options called 'useauthor' and
+ 'useeditor'. These options may still be used globally to set the
+ default behavior.
+
+ In addition to that, Bibliography and citation styles may define
+ additional package and entry options. See \DeclareEntryOption and
+ \DeclareBibliographyOption for details.
+
+* Introducing multicite commands
+
+ This release introduces an entirely new class of citation
+ commands called 'multicite' commands. The point of a multicite
+ command is that its argument may be a fully qualified list of
+ citations where each key has its own pre- and postnote. The syntax
+ is straightforward. Instead of:
+
+ \cite[See][55]{key1}; \cite[12]{key2}; \cite[93]{key3}
+
+ you can now say:
+
+ \cites[See][55]{key1}[12]{key2}[93]{key3}
+
+ This is particularly useful with parenthetical citations and
+ citations given in footnotes. It's also possible to assign a pre-
+ and/or postnote to the entire list. These global notes are given
+ in parentheses:
+
+ \footcites(See)(and chapter 3)[55]{key1}[12]{key2}[93]{key3}
+
+ See \cites, \parencites, \footcites, etc. in the manual. There is
+ also an \autocites command (a multicite version of \autocite).
+
+ Defining new multicite commands is very easy because they are
+ based on the regular citation commands. See the documentation of
+ \DeclareMultiCiteCommand for details.
+
+* Improved trackers and tracking control
+
+ The 'trackers' provided by biblatex have been greatly improved
+ and extended. This release also adds new trackers which
+ correspond to the requirements of some common citation styles.
+ See the package options 'pagetracker', 'citetracker',
+ 'ibidtracker', 'opcittracker', and 'loccittracker' for all the
+ gory details. Also see \ifciteibid, \ifopcit, and \ifloccit.
+ It's possible to control tracking in the document, see
+ \pagetrackertrue/false and \citetrackertrue/false for details.
+ Note that text commands like \citetitle are now exluded from
+ tracking by default. See also the point below.
+
+* Tracker reset support
+
+ It's possible to reset trackers and citation styles and several
+ different levels. For the built-in trackers, see the package
+ option 'citereset' as well as the user-level command \citereset.
+ For style-specific reset support, see \InitializeCitationStyle,
+ \InitializeBibliographyStyle, \OnManualCitation, and the
+ user-level command \mancite.
+
+* New entry types, more custom entry types
+
+ This release adds the entry types 'periodical' and 'patent',
+ which are fully supported by the standard styles. Several new
+ custom types have also been added. The custom types are not
+ supported by default, but they may be useful in custom styles.
+
+* New field/list subtype: key field/list
+
+ I've introduced a new field/list data subtype called key
+ field/key list. They may hold printable data or localization keys
+ and work as follows: A test is performed to determine whether the
+ value of the field is a known localization key. If so, the
+ localized string is printed. If not, the value is printed as is.
+
+* Improved postnote handling, alternative pagination schemes
+
+ The handling of page numbers in the 'pages' field and in the
+ postnote argument to citation commands has been improved
+ significantly. Biblatex does range detection now and recognizes
+ Roman numerals as numbers. It also supports alternative
+ 'pagination' schemes (columns, line or verse numbers, etc.).
+
+ See the fields 'pagination' and 'bookpagination' and related
+ pointers in the changelog. See also \mkpageprefix, \ppspace,
+ \pno, \ppno, \nopp, \psq, \psqq.
+
+* Support for unique names in citations
+
+ This release introduces support for unique names in citations.
+ Some author-year and author-title citation styles require
+ unambiguous names in citations. For example, with entries such as
+
+ John Smith 1995
+ Edward Smith 1995
+
+ citations would be rendered as
+
+ J. Smith 1995
+ E. Smith 1995
+
+ rather than
+
+ Smith 1995a
+ Smith 1995b
+
+ See the package option 'uniquename' and the special counter
+ 'uniquename' for details. Note that this feature is now enabled
+ by default in the following styles: authoryear, authoryear-comp,
+ authortitle-terse, authortitle-tcomp.
+
+* Improved support for numeric labels
+
+ The 'defernums' package option addresses the problem of
+ discontinuous numbering when using a numeric style in combination
+ with bibliography filters. If this option is enabled, the numeric
+ labels are assigned the first time an entry is printed in any
+ bibliography. This is similar to the traditional algorithm used
+ by LaTeX to assign numeric labels.
+
+* Alternative, non-inheriting cross-referencing mechanism
+
+ This release introduces an alternative cross-referencing
+ mechanism which does not inherit any data. It's useful in styles
+ which format cross-referenced entries differently. See the
+ description of the field 'xref' and related pointers in the
+ manual.
+
+* Support for different encodings
+
+ Biblatex is now capable of handling .bib files with an encoding
+ which is different from the encoding of the .tex file. See the
+ 'bibencoding' package option for details.
+
+* More robust handling of citation keys
+
+ This release adds some normalization code which deals with
+ special characters in citation keys. A typical example are keys
+ which contain an underscore. This should be much more robust now.
+
+* Renamed fields
+
+ The 'journal' field has been renamed to 'journaltitle' but the
+ old name is still supported as an alias. There's also a
+ 'journalsubtitle' field and fields for the title and the subtitle
+ of a single issue. In other words, article entries now support a
+ complete set of titles similar to inbook-like entry types:
+ journaltitle/issuetitle/title essentially correspond to
+ maintitle/booktitle/title.
+
+ The field name 'id' turned out to be incompatible with JabRef.
+ Apart from that, the name is a bit too generic for what this
+ field holds anyway. It's called 'eid' now (electronic ID) and
+ holds an article ID used by online journals or journals which are
+ also available online.
+
+* 'labelctitle' replaced by 'singletitle'
+
+ The 'labelctitle' field has removed in favor of a different
+ mechanism using a test called \ifsingletitle. The package option
+ 'labelctitle' has also been renamed to 'singletitle'.
+
+* Alphabetic label now configurable
+
+ The alphabetic label provided in the 'labelalpha' field is now
+ configurable to a certain extend. It is responsive to the global
+ package options 'maxnames' and 'minnames'. It's also possible to
+ influence the handling of truncated labels by redefining
+ \labelalphaothers.
+
+* Name types
+
+ This release introduces the concept of a name type. This is best
+ explained by example. Suppose a book has a compiler rather than
+ an editor. In previous versions of this package, there was no way
+ to override the string 'editor' and 'edited by'. Starting with
+ this release, you may specify 'compiler' as an editor type:
+
+ @book{...,
+ editor = {...},
+ editortype = {compiler},
+
+ Supported editor types are 'editor' (the default) and 'compiler'.
+ Note that this mechanism is hooked up to bibliography strings
+ hence it may be extended. See the fields 'authortype',
+ 'editortype', and 'name[a-c]type' in the manual.
+
+* Consistent set of wrappers
+
+ I've completed the generic wrapper commands provided by biblatex
+ so that they form a complete set. Instead of using the solution
+ in the left column of the following list, use the wrapper in the
+ right column:
+
+ (...) -> \mkbibparens{...}
+ [...] -> \mkbibbrackets{...}
+ \footnote{...} -> \mkbibfootnote{...}
+ \textsuperscript{...} -> \mkbibsuperscript{...}
+ \emph{...} -> \mkbibemph{...}
+ \enquote{...} -> \mkbibquote{...}
+ ``...'' -> \mkbibquote{...}
+
+ The wrappers integrate much better with biblatex and they also
+ provide additional features.
+
+* New citation styles, some styles renamed
+
+ I've renamed all verbose citation styles from 'authortitle-*' to
+ 'verbose-*' and added some new styles. See the changelog for
+ details.
+
+* natbib compatibility style
+
+ To facilitate the move from natbib to biblatex, this release adds
+ a special natbib compatibility style which maps natbib's core
+ citation commands to equivalent biblatex commands. See the
+ package option 'natbib' for details.
+
+* All citation commands scan ahead for punctuation
+
+ Starting with this release, all citation commands scan ahead for
+ punctuation to avoid double punctuation at the end of a citation.
+ This used to be a feature exclusive to \autocite. The 'autopunct'
+ package option and the \DeclareAutoPunctuation command will now
+ affect all citation commands, not only \autocite.
+
+* Support for font style adaptation of punctuation
+
+ This release implements an alternative way of dealing with
+ punctuation after a field printed in a different font (for
+ example, a title printed in italics). The standard (La)TeX way of
+ dealing with this problem is to add a small amount of space (the
+ so-called italic correction) to avoid clashes between the final
+ letter of a word in italics and the following (upright)
+ punctuation mark.
+
+ Biblatex is now capable of adapting the punctuation to the font
+ of the preceeding field. See '\mkbibemph' and '\setpunctfont' for
+ details. Note that this feature is experimental. It may very well
+ have a few quirks. Also note that it is disabled by default. Use
+ the 'punctfont' package option to enable it.
+
+* Extended language support: Norwegian, Danish
+
+ This release comes with a norsk.lbx and a danish.lbx file. The
+ translations have been contributed by Johannes Wilm.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.6
+
+* Style-independent citations
+
+ This release introduces a special command for style-independent
+ citations. The idea behind the \autocite command is to provide
+ higher-level citation markup which makes global switching from
+ inline citations to citations given in footnotes (or as
+ superscripts) possible.
+
+ The \autocite command is built on top of lower-level commands
+ like \parencite and \footcite. The citation style provides an
+ \autocite definition by way of \DeclareAutoCiteCommand. This
+ definition may be activated by way of the 'autocite' package
+ option. See the documentation of \autocite in the manual for
+ further details.
+
+* Forcing capitalized name prefixes
+
+ One thing that's been on my personal wishlist for some time is an
+ equivalent to natbib's \Citet command. This release finally
+ introduces additional citation commands which force capitalized
+ name prefixes (provided that there is a prefix and that it is to
+ be printed as part of the citation, i.e. the 'useprefix' option
+ is enabled). The new citation commands are defined as follows in
+ biblatex.cbx:
+
+ \newcommand*{\Cite}{\bibsentence\cite}
+ \newcommand*{\Textcite}{\bibsentence\textcite}
+ \newcommand*{\Parencite}{\bibsentence\parencite}
+ \newcommand*{\Footcite}{\bibsentence\footcite}
+ \newcommand*{\Citeauthor}{\bibsentence\citeauthor}
+
+ Here's how it works. Biblatex's punctuation tracker is based on
+ TeX's space factor. All the \bibsentence command does is setting
+ the space factor to a special sentinel value which is detected by
+ \bibstring. The name formatting directive used by all citation
+ commands now incorporates the new \ifcapital test. This test is
+ true if the punctuation tracker would capitalize a bibliography
+ string at this point. If the formatting directive detects the
+ sentinel value, it will capitalize the name prefix (if
+ applicable). A handy side-effect of this approach is that a
+ possible 'prenote' argument is taken into account automatically.
+ For example:
+
+ '\cite{vandoren}' prints 'van Doren 1995'
+
+ and
+
+ '\Cite{vandoren}' prints 'Van Doren 1995'
+
+ but
+
+ '\Cite[See]{vandoren}' prints 'See van Doren 1995'.
+
+ This also works in conjunction with bibliography strings. For
+ example, if the citation style replaces the standard citation by
+ something like '\bibstring{ibid}', then
+
+ '\cite{vandoren}' prints 'ibid.'
+
+ but
+
+ '\Cite{vandoren}' prints 'Ibid.'.
+
+ In other words, unless the citation style is doing something very
+ unusual, there is no need to define \Cite et al. explicitly with
+ \DeclareCiteCommand. The default definitions should work fine in
+ all normal cases. If the style doesn't print any names but rather
+ numerical or alphabetic citations then nothing is capitalized, so
+ that's no problem either.
+
+* Custom filters for \printbibliography
+
+ See \defbibfilter and the 'filter' option of \printbibliography
+ in the manual.
+
+* Support for unsorted bibliographies
+
+ See the package option 'sorting=none'.
+
+* Automatic truncation of literal lists
+
+ This release introduces the package options 'maxitems' and
+ 'minitems' which are similar to 'maxnames' and 'minnames' but
+ affect literal lists. There are also corresponding (local)
+ options for \printbibliography, \printshorthands, and so on.
+
+* Improved support for corporate authors and editors
+
+ There are two new name lists ('shortauthor' and 'shorteditor')
+ which may be helpful when dealing with corporate authors and
+ editors. Basically, 'author' and 'editor' are used in the
+ bibliography whereas 'shortauthor' and 'shorteditor' are used in
+ citations. The point is that you can give a short form of the name
+ for use in citations. For example:
+
+ @Type{key,
+ author = {{National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)}},
+ shortauthor = {NASA},
+ ...
+ }
+
+ This will print "NASA" in citations but "National Aeronautics and
+ Space Administration (NASA)" in the bibliography. Note that
+ 'shortauthor' and 'shorteditor' are name lists, not literal
+ fields. This means that corporate names must be wrapped in an
+ additional pair of curly braces.
+
+* Improved support for articles: journal series and electronic ID
+
+ Journal series and article IDs are now catered for by the
+ standard styles (entry type 'article'). Note that the 'articleid'
+ field has been renamed to 'eid'. See the annotated bibliography
+ in the 'examples' directory for examples.
+
+* DOI support
+
+ The 'doi' field is now catered for by the standard styles
+ (complete with hyperlinks). See the annotated bibliography in the
+ 'examples' directory for examples.
+
+* Fine-grained control of title formatting
+
+ Previous versions of this package provided two formatting
+ directives for the title field: 'title' (for entry types like
+ 'book', 'collection', etc.) and 'titlein' (for 'article',
+ 'inbook', 'incollection', etc.). I've enhanced this scheme such
+ that the format of the title may be defined on a per-type basis.
+ In biblatex.def you'll find the following directives for the
+ bibliography:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title:book}{\emph{#1}\isdot}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{title:inbook}{\enquote{#1}\midsentence}
+ ...
+
+ as well as dedicated directives for the titles in citations:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{citetitle:book}{\emph{#1}\isdot}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{citetitle:inbook}{\enquote{#1}\midsentence}
+ ...
+
+ and in the list of shorthands:
+
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{lostitle:book}{\emph{#1}\isdot}
+ \DeclareFieldFormat{lostitle:inbook}{\enquote{#1}\midsentence}
+ ...
+
+ I've updated all generic definitions in biblatex.cbx,
+ biblatex.bbx, and standard.bbx accordingly. Note that the
+ 'title:type' directives are used for both the 'title' and the
+ 'subtitle' field (which are wrapped in a \printtext command
+ controlling the formatting, see the 'title+stitle' bibmacro in
+ biblatex.bbx for an example of how it works). In other words:
+ redefining the 'subtitle' field formatting directive has no
+ effect.
+
+* Rearranged localization keys
+
+ I've rearranged and extended the localization keys quite a bit.
+ This also implies several changes in biblatex.bbx.
+
+* Support for KOMA-Script and Memoir
+
+ The default definitions of the bibliography headings (as defined
+ in biblatex.def) are now automatically adapted for the
+ KOMA-Script classes and the Memoir class.
+
+* Improved Spanish support
+
+ The Spanish localization module now handles the Spanish word
+ 'and' properly ('y' or 'e', depending on the context).
+
+* Italian support
+
+ This release comes with a new italian.lbx file. The translations
+ have been contributed by Enrico Gregorio.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.5
+
+ My original plan for 0.5 was to make minor changes only and focus
+ on fixing bugs. Since only a few issues turned up (memory issues
+ in biblatex.bst), I ended up implementing new things from the
+ wishlist. Please note that the wishlist is closed until after
+ version 1.0.
+
+* New author-title citation styles
+
+ I've added some verbose author-title styles which may be of
+ interest for users in the humanities. The styles are called
+ 'authortitle-verb' and 'authortitle-cverb'. The 'traditional
+ style has been renamed to 'authortitle-trad' and there is an
+ additional new style called 'authortitle-strad'. The styles
+ support shorthands and are fully hyperlinked. The links point to
+ the first, verbose citation instead of the bibliography so these
+ styles may be used without a bibliography, if desired.
+
+ I've also added a matching 'dummy' bibliography style for every
+ citation style. The dummy style will simply load one of the more
+ generic backend styles. For example, the 'authortitle-verb' style
+ loads the 'authortitle' style. The point is that you may simply
+ use the 'style' package option instead of 'citestyle' plus
+ 'bibstyle'.
+
+* Conditional special fields, optimizations in biblatex.bst
+
+ The special fields 'labelalpha', 'labelctitle', 'labelnumber',
+ and 'labelyear' are conditional now. If a style requires one of
+ those fields, it needs to request them by setting the
+ corresponding package option. E.g., all numeric styles include
+ the line
+
+ \ExecuteBibliographyOptions{labelnumber}
+
+ This will instruct biblatex to provide the 'labelnumber' field
+ which is undefined by default now. Making these fields
+ conditional allows for some memory-related optimizations in
+ biblatex.bst.
+
+* Author-level support for full citations
+
+ This version adds an author-level command which makes it possible
+ to execute a bibliography driver in a citation command. See
+ '\rundriver' in the manual.
+
+* Page tracker
+
+ I've implemented a page tracker. The page tracker records the
+ real page on which citations, entries in the bibliography, and
+ entries in the list of shorthands end up. It can work on a per
+ page basis or per double page spread. The page tracker is
+ disabled by default. See the package option 'pagetracker' and the
+ commands '\iffirstonpage' and '\ifsamepage' in the manual.
+
+* Unique indentification of reference instances
+
+ Every 'instance' of a reference is now uniquely identified by a
+ value of the 'citecount' counter. In other words: this counter is
+ incremented for every key processed by any citation command, for
+ every item in the bibliography and for every item in the list of
+ shorthands. This is required by the page tracker but it's also
+ useful if you need to generate a unique anchor name for
+ hyperlinks.
+
+* Extended support for hyperlinks
+
+ I've renamed '\bibhyperlink' to '\bibhyperref' and added generic
+ '\bibhypertarget' and '\bibhyperlink' commands. '\bibhyperref'
+ creates a link from a citation to the corresponding item in the
+ bibliography. '\bibhypertarget' and '\bibhyperlink' are more
+ generic and correspond to the '\hypertarget' and '\hyperlink'
+ commands of the hyperref package. The point here is that you
+ don't need an explicit '\ifhyperref' check. If hyperlinks are
+ disabled, these wrappers will simply pass on their text argument.
+
+ As an additional benefit, they also provide better anchor
+ placement. The anchors created by '\hypertarget' seem to be
+ located at the baseline, i.e. if you click on a link you get the
+ impression that your PDF viewer jumps to the line of text just
+ below the one you mean.
+
+* More name lists
+
+ See the 'annotator', 'commentator', 'introduction', 'foreword',
+ and 'afterword' lists in the annotated example.
+
+* Special fields for indexing
+
+ See the 'indextitle' and 'indexsorttitle' fields in the annotated
+ example and the indexing examples.
+
+* Spanish support
+
+ This release comes with a preliminary spanish.lbx file. The
+ translations have been contributed by Ignacio Fern\'andez
+ Galv\'an. Some advanced features are missing from this file
+ because they are still under scrutiny but it should nevertheless
+ be perfectly funtional.
+
+* Examples
+
+ I've added a biblatex showcase with some example files in the
+ 'examples' subdirectory. There's an example for every citation
+ style and some generic examples demonstrating multiple
+ bibliographies, split bibliographies, indexing, and so on.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.4
+
+* Wishlist closed
+
+ As of this release, the wishlist is closed until after version
+ 1.0. There are already more wishes in the pipeline than I can
+ implement in time for 1.0...
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.3
+
+ The changelog for this release is shockingly long so I'll just
+ point out the general developments behind the individual entries
+ in the changelog. See the full changelog for all the gory
+ details. Note that styles written for version 0.2 will not work
+ with 0.3.
+
+* New data type: literal list
+
+ This release introduces a new data type for literal lists. The
+ point of a literal list is that the list is split up at the 'and'
+ but the individual items are not dissected further. This is
+ intended for fields such as 'location' and 'publisher' since they
+ may contain a list of items but these items are not personal
+ names.
+
+ I have modified the macro names of the entire data interface for
+ lists to match the change. All macros with the term 'list' in
+ their name are renamed such that 'list' is replaced by 'name(s)'.
+ For example, \printlist is now \printnames, \DeclareListFormat is
+ \DeclareNameFormat, and so on. The old names are used for new
+ macros which deal with literal lists. The complete list of
+ affected macros is given in the changelog. Note that the names of
+ the macros which dump the unformatted data have changes as well
+ (\biblist -> \thename; \thelist (new); \bibfield -> \thefield).
+
+ These changes will require updates to all custom citation and
+ bibliography styles. However, the changes are only a matter of
+ some search & replace commands. I'm sorry about the inconvenience
+ but I think the new naming scheme is better than having macro
+ names like \printliterallist. I've decided to go for it now since
+ biblatex is still in beta.
+
+ As part of these changes, the data type of the following fields
+ has been changed from 'literal field' to 'literal list':
+ location, origlocation, publisher, institution, organization.
+
+* Support for hyperref
+
+ Hyperref support is available now. This means that citations may
+ be transformed into links pointing to the bibliography. All
+ standard citation styles support that out of the box, custom
+ styles need to use the new hyperref interface. It works like
+ this: the anchor (i.e. the target of the link) is set
+ automatically by biblatex hence the bibliography style does not
+ need to do anything special. The citation style is responsible
+ for marking the link area. This is just a matter of passing the
+ relevant part of the citation to a special macro or formatting
+ directive doing the low-level work. See the changelog for
+ pointers to the relevant sections of the manual.
+
+* Support for back references
+
+ I've added support for back references. The page numbers are
+ provided in the 'pageref' field which uses the new literal list
+ data type. Printing them is just a matter of \printlist{pageref}.
+ Note that you need to enable the 'backref' package option to get
+ any back reference data. There is also a bibmacro called
+ 'pageref' in biblatex.bbx which adds a label. Bibliography styles
+ should print the list via \usebibmacro{pageref}. There are two
+ related list formatting directives in biblatex.def. The default
+ directive just prints the list as is, using a comma as a
+ separator. The directive 'pageref:comp' prints a sequence of more
+ than two consecutive pages as a range. The easiest way to try it
+ out is: \DeclareListAlias{pageref}{pageref:comp}.
+
+ The references are restricted to page numbers, back references to
+ sections are not supported. This is a deliberate decision. I
+ haven't bothered implementing back references to sections because
+ LaTeX's referencing mechanism is notoriously unreliable in this
+ respect. It essentially provides two pieces of information: the
+ formatted value of the last counter incremented by way of
+ \refstepcounter and the page number. The latter value is usually
+ unambiguous but the former could refer to just about everything.
+ The implications of this become obvious when you're using the
+ backref package with its 'ref' option (rather than 'pageref') and
+ put \cite commands in footnotes. The bibliography will then
+ include something like 'sections 1, 2, 3', but these numbers do
+ not refer to sections, these are footnote numbers!
+
+ Getting back references to sections right would require
+ reimplementing LaTeX's entire referencing mechanism (or
+ interfacing with a package doing that) and I don't want to get
+ into that business just yet. I may look into support for the zref
+ package later, but that's something for a post-1.0 release of
+ biblatex.
+
+* Rearranged author-title citation styles
+
+ I've rearranged the author-title citation styles because most
+ people seem to expect the behavior of the old 'authortitle-verb'
+ style from the plain 'authortitle' style. So 'authortitle-verb'
+ is the plain 'authortitle' style now. The style formerly known as
+ 'authortitle' has been renamed to 'authortitle-terse',
+ 'authortitle-comp' is 'authortitle-cterse' now. I've also added a
+ new 'authortitle-comp' style to round off this subset of styles.
+
+* Handling of thebibliography/theshorthands streamlined
+
+ The handling of thebibliography and theshorthands as well as some
+ related facilities has been overhauled and streamlined. See the
+ changelog and section 4.2.2 of the manual for details.
+
+* Handling of 'and others' simplified
+
+ The way biblatex handles the string 'and others', which is used
+ in bib files to truncate a list of names, has been overhauled and
+ simplified. Essentially, I have removed 'moreauthor' and similar
+ fields since biblatex handles this internally now. All style
+ authors need to do is use \ifandothers and/or \ifmorenames. See
+ the manual for details.
+
+* Improved \addtocategory
+
+ \addtocategory now cycles its arguments through the aux file.
+ This means that it may be used in the preamble and anywhere in
+ the document body, even after \printbibliography.
+
+RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 0.2
+
+* Internal changes in bibliography styles
+
+ I have rearranged all bibliography styles. It should be more
+ obvious now how many code is shared by the bibliography styles,
+ namely all 'driver' code. The shared code has been moved to
+ standard.bbx, so think of that as the biblatex standard style.
+ This code is used by numeric.bbx, alphabetic.bbx,
+ authortitle.bbx, and authoryear.bbx; standard.bbx is not meant to
+ be used stand-alone. A few bibmacros have also been moved to
+ biblatex.bbx.
+
+* Internal changes in citation styles
+
+ There is only one change affecting the citation styles. The
+ 'postnote' bibmacro in biblatex.cbx now automatically inserts a
+ prefix like 'p.' or 'pp.' where applicable.
+
+* Optional argument for \printtext
+
+ \printtext takes an optional argument now. The point is that you
+ can use \printtext as a formatting hook. The advantage of this
+ approach is that \printtext integrates with the punctuation
+ tracking. I have revised biblatex.bbx to use this approach where
+ applicable.
+
+* New fields
+
+ There are several new fields, some of which are supported by the
+ standard styles. This has lead to further changes in
+ biblatex.bbx, including changes to the names of existing
+ bibmacros.