How to use biber
Here is a MWE (not really minimum, but showing some options) that should get you started.
Other possible values for the biblatex
options are described in the biblatex documentation.
\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style=authoryear-icomp,
sortlocale=de_DE,
natbib=true,
url=false,
doi=true,
eprint=false
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
colorlinks=true,
}
%% ##############################
\begin{document}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet~\citep{kastenholz}.
At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum~\citet{sigfridsson}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}
To compile you should now call pdflatex
, biber
, pdflatex
.
biber
operates on the .bcf
file, so either use biber %.bcf
or (even better) just biber %
, where %
stands for the basename of your main .tex
file.
biblatex-examples.bib
is a file that comes with your TeX distribution, you can find it at TEXMF/bibtex/bib/biblatex.biblatex-examples.bib
or online. It can be used for testing. Use a different filename for your own .bib
file.
The natbib=true
option allows you to use citep
and citet
style citations in you text. This is mainly for compatibility with old code. For new code, use \textcite{}
and \parencite{}
instead. biblatex
knows some more cite commands like \autocite{}
or \footcite{}
. These are described in the biblatex documentation.
run texdoc biber
from the command line and you'll get the documentation. However, using biber
as a replacement for bibtex
you have to define the backend with
\usepackage[backend=biber,...]{biblatex}
and then change your bibtex
run into a biber
one, that is all.
However, with the latest biblatex
package (TeXLive 2016) the backend=biber
setting is the default, you have only to specify bibtex
or bibtex8
if you want to use one of the old programs. And, of course, you have to change the program name in your editor. For example: in TeXstudio it is Options->Configure->Build->Standard Bibprogram->biber.