BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Changing Natbib to Biblatex

[Drounal]

Hey all,

My first post, hurray!! Ok, so here is a little challenge for everyone!

Here is my problem. I'm working on my thesis and found a pretty amazing latex template (the Cambridge model, here: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/tex ... esisStyle/). The problem is I would like to have my bibliography show in footnotes, which \footnote{\cite{...}} will not do. As far as I know. After some time on the internet, I gathered that I should use Biblatex instead of Natbib. I therefore replaced:

\usepackage[square, sort, numbers]{natbib}

With:

\usepackage{biblatex}

And ended up with:

! Package Biblatex Error: Incompatible package 'backref'

I also tried variations along the lines of:

\usepackage[natbib=true]{biblatex}
\usepackage[natbib=true, hyperref=true, backref=false]{biblatex}
\usepackage[natbib=true,style=verbose-trad2,sorting=nyt,hyperref=true, backref=true]{biblatex}

But with no luck so far. I also tried making changes in other places (namely in the CUEDthesisPSnPDF.cls file) without more luck.

I understand that the use of the template makes things less flexible but it really fits my needs so I'd like to keep the template and find a way to use Biblatex.

Any idea anyone? Thanks a million in advance!!

Drounal

[Current situation: MacOS 10.6.7, MacTeX 2010 (regularly updated)]

[Drounal]

Problem solved!

I had gotten in touch with the "latex expert" of the University some time ago and he eventually came back with a solution! (see link in OP)

Thanks all.

Drounal

[mjameel]

Dear Drounal,

I hope you are doing well, I have exactly same as your past problem, could you please tell me how did you fix that, thank you very much.

Kind regards,
Mohammed A. Jameel
The University of Melbourne

[knowah]

For anyone who happens to stumble across this in 2019 or later, and is using that same Cambridge PhD thesis template, you can do the following to overcome the "natbib is incompatible with biblatex" issue:

At the top of the thesis.tex document, add biblatex to the \documentclass, e.g.:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,times,numbered,print,index,biblatex]{Classes/PhDThesisPSnPDF}

In the bibliography section of thesis.tex, remove the \bibliographystyle{} command and replace it with just \printbibliography

Remove any \RequirePackage{biblatex} or \usepackage{biblatex} commands you may have put in thesis.tex or Preamble/preamble.tex.

If you want to modify the bibliography style (for example, I wanted to abbreviate authors' first names with giveninits=true), you can edit the file Classes/PhDThesisPSnPDF.cls: in the Bibliography section, find the relevant \ifPHD@biblatex section and edit the \RequirePackage[...]{biblatex} command accordingly.

~Noah