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|
$Id: RELEASE,v 1.1b 2011/02/04 11:36:21 lehman stable $
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.
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