How to install Biblatex
7 August 2007Biblatex is a bibtex style package for Humanities and Social Science style footnotes and/or bibliography. Since most default bibtex styles are for math and science or psychology, those of us MLA users are out in the cold. I have so far used Biblatex for philosophy apers using Chicago styling, but I’m sure it can do more than that. I’m in the process of developing a setup for MLA. In the meantime, here’s how to install the Biblatex package.
Get the biblatex package here:
www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/biblatex.html> (You’ll have to click the download link on that page.)
1. Unpack the zip.
2. Inside the expanded folder (biblatex/) rename latex to biblatex.
3. Find out where you local texlive install is located. For the unix users, this is represented in the system by the variable $TEXMFLOCAL. Here are some possibilities to get you stated:
- Mac: /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/
- Linux: /usr/local/share/texmf/
- Win: c:\localtexmf\
Once you have found this folder’s path, we’re ready to proceed. We’ll be referring to it as texmf/ for short.
4. Copy the folder biblatex/biblatex into texmf/tex/latex/
5. Inside biblatex/bibtex/ you’ll find the biblatex.bst file. Copy it to texmf/bibtex/bst/.
Almost Done!
6. This is the last step. I’m afraid it is Mac/Linux only since I don’t know how to do it on a PC. For this you’ll need a command line and a root or sudo password. I’m going to assume you know or can easily find out about those. What you’re going to do is reload the local TeX database so that it will know about the files we installed. It’s called rehashing. To do it, type at the commandline prom
sudo texhash
That’s it. If that command succeeded you are good to go.
Hey, it seems we have the same goal! How’re you getting along in your Biblatex implementation of MLA? I’m afraid to do too much work on mine until the macros are stable in 0.7, but I’ve made the files I use available at the above address. I’d be keen to improve them in any way, if you find something decent.
I’d also gladly start using yours if you’ve gone farther than I have.
Edit: Oops, it seems the address wasn’t linked to my name like I thought it would be. My style files can be found at http://konx.net/biblatex-MLA/
Well, I was going to use latex but it looks like there is no mature code to do citations in MLA style. I tried Mr. Clawson’s MLA 0.2 but it doesn’t work with biblatex 0.7.
Perhaps I’ve been dense so far, but how do you do Chicago styling with biblatex? I haven’t found the style files for that, and am not sure of which of the standard styles that comes with biblatex is correct for Chicago…
I’ve been using opcit, which works quite well but doesn’t let me get exactly chicago style. So biblatex seems my next option.
I installed it according to your lesson but it doesn’t seem to want to work. latexing stalls saying that it can’t find etoolbox.sty
any ideas?
installed etoolbox.sty from ctan and things are now running…
To Nick- I haven’t used it myself but I believe there is a Chicago setting for the natbib package which would work better for you than biblatex. There is a page about it here: http://web.reed.edu/cis/help/LaTeX/bibtexstyles.html which might help. They have a chicago style for download.
To Joshua- It’s true biblatex is really in an early stage. Another good package to check out is jurabib. It is supposed to be very good for MLA citations (an example here: http://www.yanb.be/w/latex).
Hope this helps a little…. humanities citations in latex are definitely demanding
Hey, Joshua-
Sorry about being slow with the update to the biblatex 0.7 version of my mla style. I actually have a version 0.3 compatible with the new biblatex, and I sent it along to someone who suggested a patch to get his feedback. Meanwhile I began improving it even more. So, there’s not only a secret version 0.3 (which I will upload in the next few days), there’s actually a version 0.4 well on the way.
Version 0.4 adds a lot of support for more biblatex (0.7) features–and MLA guidelines: crossreferences, newspaper articles, various bug squashings, citations that bypass the author (if mentioned in the sentence), etc. I worked on the MLA style set for jurabib, and it was a nightmare. In the end we had random bugs that wouldn’t go away. Katrin Althans did a great job getting MLA-style footnoting with jurabib (http://wiki.lyx.org/BibTeX/JurabibMLA), but the parenthetical citations were never very trustworthy. In the end, it’s probably for the best that Jurabib’s sighed its last sighs, leaving room for biblatex (which, despite its perceived infancy, is far more mature) to grow into the void.
I’m wondering if anyone has gotten biblatex to produce anything sort of like Chicago style footnotes (I’ve actually used Atkin’s Jurabib/MLA footnotes in the past for that job–with a few tweaks–to decent effect, but it has some weirdness with adding weird periods and such…)
Any help or style files would be much appreciated!