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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label biblatex</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Replacing the BibTeX&#8211;LaTeX mechanism</h3>
<p/>Producing a successor to BibTeX has long been a favoured activity
among a certain class of TeX-users; the author has seen reports of
progress (on several projects), over the years, but few that claim to
be ready for &#8220;real-world&#8221; use.
<p/>Few would deny that BibTeX is ripe for renewal: as originally
conceived, it was a program for creating bibliographies for technical
documents, in English.  People have contributed mechanisms for a
degree of multilingual use (whose techniques are arcane, and quite
likely inextensible), while an extension (<i>bibtex8</i>) allows
use with 8-bit character codes, thus providing some multilingual
capabilities.  In addition, specialist BibTeX style files are
available for use in non-technical papers.
<p/>BibTeX uses a style language whose mechanisms are unfamiliar to
most current programmers: it&#8217;s difficult to learn, but since there are
few opportunities to write the language, it&#8217;s also difficult to become
fluent (in the way that so many people fluently write the equally
arcane TeX macro language).
<p/>Oren Patashnik (the author of BibTeX) summarises the issues as he
sees them, in a 
<a href="http://tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb24-1/patashnik.pdf">TUG conference paper from 2003</a>
that seems to suggest that we might expect a
BibTeX 1.0 &#8230; which hasn&#8217;t (yet) appeared.
<p/>In the absence of BibTeX 1.0, what do we need from the bibliography
system of the future? &#8212; simple: a superset of what BibTeX does
(or can be made to do), preferably implementing a simpler style
language, and with coherent multilingual capabilities.
<p/>There are two parts to a bibliography system; processing the database
of citations, and typesetting the results.  The existing BibTeX
system provides a means of processing the database, and there are
macros built into LaTeX, as well as many LaTeX packages, that
process the results.
<p/>Of the direct BibTeX replacements, only two have been submitted to
CTAN: CrossTeX and <i>biber</i>.
<p/>CrossTeX&#8217;s language feels familiar to the existing user of
BibTeX, but it&#8217;s redesigned in an object-oriented style, and looks
(to a non-user) as if it may well be adequately flexible.  It is said
to operate as a BibTeX replacement.
<p/>CrossTeX&#8217;s team respond to queries, and seem well aware of the
need for multilingual support, though it isn&#8217;t currently offered.
<p/><i>Biber</i> is intimately associated with the LaTeX package
<i>biblatex</i>; it is logically a BibTeX replacement, but is also
capable of using bibliography databases in its own
<i>biblatexml</i> (XML-based) format.  <i>Biblatex</i>
can also use BibTeX, but <i>biber</i> opens up a far wider
range of possibilities, including full Unicode support.
<p/><i>Biblatex</i> is a processor for the output of an application
such as <i>biber</i> or BibTeX; the style of citations and of
the bibliography itself (in your document) is determined by the way
your <i>biblatex</i> style has been set up, not on some
BibTeX-LaTeX package combination.  <i>Biblatex</i>&#8217;s
structure thus eliminates the collections of BibTeX styles, at a
stroke; it comes with a basic set of styles, and details are
determined by options, set at package loading time.  The author,
Philipp Lehman, evaluated the whole field of bibliography software
before starting, and as a result the package provides answers to
many of the questions asked in the bibliography sections of these
FAQs.
<p/><i>Biblatex</i> was released as experimental software, but it&#8217;s
clear that many users are already using it happily; Lehman is
responsive to problem reports, at the moment, but a <em>de facto</em>
set of expert users is already establishing itself.  A set of
contributed styles has appeared, which cover some of the trickier
bibliography styles.  The road map of the project shows that we are
now working on the final <em>beta</em> releases before the &#8220;stable&#8221;
<i>biblatex</i> 1.0.
<p/>Finally, <i>Amsrefs</i> uses a transformed <code>.bib</code> file,
which is expressed as LaTeX macros.  (The package provides a
BibTeX style that performs the transformation, so that a LaTeX
source containing a <code>\</code><code>nocite{*}</code> command enables BibTeX to
produce a usable <i>amsrefs</i> bibliography database.)
<p/><i>Amsrefs</i> is maintained by the AMS as part of its author
support programme,
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>amsrefs.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/amsrefs.zip">macros/latex/contrib/amsrefs</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/amsrefs/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/amsrefs.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>biber</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/biblio/biber.zip">biblio/biber</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/biblio/biber/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/biber.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>biblatex.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex.zip">macros/latex/contrib/biblatex</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/biblatex.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>bibtex8</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/biblio/bibtex/8-bit">biblio/bibtex/8-bit</a>; <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org//help/Catalogue/entries/bibtex8bit.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>biblatex contributions</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex-contrib">macros/latex/contrib/biblatex-contrib</a>
<dt><tt><i>CrossTeX</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/biblio/crosstex">biblio/crosstex</a>; <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org//help/Catalogue/entries/crosstex.html">catalogue entry</a>
</dl>
<p/><p/>


<p/><p/><p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=biblatex">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=biblatex</a>
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