BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ biblatex with BibTeX and XeLaTeX: Unicode compatible?

[kelp]

Hi community,

I'm highly confused at the moment, I'm hoping that someone here can help me out:

Can I use Unicode characters in the bib file if I'm using biblatex with BibTeX as a backend and compiling with XeLaTex?

And more generally, which combination of what handles Unicode and which doesn't?

I've tried googling – obviously – but I'm still not clear on the issue. Can someone give me some more info and/or point me to the relevant sections in documentations/manuals/etc.?

I think it's like this:

There's BibTeX, which is not Unicode compatible.
(I think you can get some characters to work (see http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... bliography), but this doesn't work with all Unicode characters)

Is this correct?

Then there's biblatex, which can use two backends: BibTeX and biber.
biber can handle Unicode (also with just [pdf]latex?) and BibTeX can't. But what about XeLaTeX?

Experts, please help! Biblatex confuses me.

[Johannes_B]

BibTeX is a tool that sorts entries and creates the bibliography based on a given style. Changing that style is complicated.
Package biblatex was created, which takes care of creating the bibliography based on internal styles (LaTeX) which are much easier to change. The sorting is still done by BibTeX.

BibTeX cannot handle unicode, so sorting will always be buggy. That is why biber was developed, which can handle unicode and can do some alterations to the data at runtime, it is more powerful.

XeLaTeX can handle unicode/utf8, so if you have english, greek, hebrew and cyrillic in your bibliography database, using biblatex/biber and xelatex or lualatex is a pretty good idea.

[kelp]

Thanks for the info! I see much clearer now.

I have a follow-up question though:

So if I use XeLaTeX with Biblatex, I can have UTF-8 encoded stuff in my bib-file and it will show up correctly in the reference in my document, but the sorting might be buggy if I sort with BibTeX, right? So sorting with biber is the way to go.

(I'm asking this as I don't know what goes on behind the scenes [are there any good references on the workflow?]: What comes first? Sorting by BibTeX/biber?)

[Johannes_B]

BibTeX is around since the mid 80s, it never reached version 1.

Because of the problems with unicode, biber was developed not even 10 years ago and still gets improvements. It definitely is the way to go.

A lot of journals still use the old workflow using bibtex, though.

[wegelin]

Could you provide an MWE where é, ü, and ð are rendered, including
the workflow?

Alternatively, is there a url that shows LaTeX macros for all alphabets?

Below is an MWE where the non-ASCII characters are not rendered in
the References. bibtex does not throw an error, and in fact the
bbl file contains the characters, but the characters are not rendered
in the resulting pdf.

I am using: XeTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-0.99992 (TeX Live 2015)

MWE workflow:

xelatex mydoc
bibtex mydoc
xelatex mydoc
xelatex mydoc

MWE mydoc.tex:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\begin{document}
Unicode:
			  Élisabeth 
			  Dörig
			  Heðin 

			 LaTeX macros:
						 \'{E}lisabeth
						 D\"{o}rig

bibtex:
\cite{junk2016v12v18vSunv10h01m00s}
\bibliography{mydoc}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\end{document}

MWE mydoc.bib:

Code: Select all

@Article{junk2016v12v18vSunv10h01m00s,
  author =   {
Unicode:
           Élisabeth
           Dörig
           Heðin
          }
  , title =     {
          LaTeX macros:
                   \'{E}lisabeth
                   D\"{o}rig
      }
  , journal =   {
         junk
            }
  , year =  {
          2016
              }
  , volume =    {
          1
            }
  , number =   {
          1
            }
  , pages =  {
          1--1
            }
}

[Johannes_B]

I compressed your two files into just one, so it can be compiled on overleaf, one the main online editors. And it compiles just fine. Everything works with a quite recent version of TeX Live.

What problems do you see?

Hint: Click on Open in online editor above the code block below.

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
	@Article{junk2016v12v18vSunv10h01m00s,
		author =   {
			Unicode:
			Élisabeth
			Dörig
			Heðin
		}
		, title =     {
			LaTeX macros:
			\'{E}lisabeth
			D\"{o}rig
		}
		, journal =   {
			junk
		}
		, year =  {
			2016
		}
		, volume =    {
			1
		}
		, number =   {
			1
		}
		, pages =  {
			1--1
		}
	}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\begin{document}
Unicode:
Élisabeth 
Dörig
Heðin 

LaTeX macros:
\'{E}lisabeth
D\"{o}rig

bibtex:
\cite{junk2016v12v18vSunv10h01m00s}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\end{document}

EDIT: We are doing a forum update right now and the direct link to overleaf is disabled. You can copy the whole code box above and paste it to overleaf*. It works just fine.

* You don't even have to sign up

[wegelin]

When I compiled it, the unicode characters were not rendered. Attached is the compiled pdf. The non-ASCII characters are rendered in the main part of the document but not in the reference list.

[Johannes_B]

mrdoc.blg and mydoc.log would be more helpful than the pdf-file. Please upload them as well.