BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ biblatex | Chicago Style with Biber

[Upboiler]

I am trying to submit a paper to an MIT Press Journal, which requires papers to use the Chicago Style. For some reason that I really just cannot understand the natbib style "chicago.sty/chicago.bst" does not actually match the Chicago style (looks like maybe it's an old version?)

I tried using the chicagoreedweb.bst but cannot make that work at all.

Then came across BibLaTeX and the fact that they have an updated chicago style. Apparently I'm supposed to use Biber. How do I make Biber work? I take it that I should modify something? I am using TeXnicCenter, btw.

Any help with either getting chicago in BibLaTeX to work, OR getting something that looks like chicago style for bibtex would be amazing.


Thanks in advance,
S

[pipk]

You don't have to use biber but it's highly recommended. But best be clear. You have two options:

• Use bibtex and a bibtex style like natbib
• Use biblatex which utilises a backend processor of which there are two:
  • bibtex - biblatex uses this just for sorting and labelling, not for styling
  • biber - Specially written for biblatex, full UTF-8, many, many more features
    • Full UTF-8 support, even for citekeys and filenames
    • On-the-fly file (re)encoding
    • Fully customisable multi-field sorting
    • Fully customisable inheritance (generalised bibtex "CROSSREF")
    • .bib field mapping/suppression for custom .bib fields
    • Remote file support
    • RIS, Endnote XML and Zotero RDF/XML support for datasources
    • Automated name and list of names disambuguation
    • Many more coming features with biblatex 2.0

Basically, biblatex moves 90% of what bibtex does into latex macros, making styles much more flexible and easier to write. It uses bibtex only for sorting and labels. biblatex can use biber instead of bibtex which does everything bibtex does for it (but better ...) plus a lot more.

You "use" biber just like you would bibtex. With biblatex+biber, you just do:

Code: Select all

pdflatex <file>
biber <file>
pdflatex <file>

Biber only needs one pass to do everything, unlike bibtex which sometimes needs several, one per section or whatever.

The biber PDF document is on SourceForge or if you have a recent TeXLive/MacTeX/MikTeX, just type "texdoc biber" for biber and "texdoc biblatex" for biblatex to read the PDF documentation.

Latest biber version is 0.9.5 which works only with biblatex 1.6.

If you post to tex.stackexchange.com, someone will almost certainly give you a template for using biblatex with chicago style.