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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Writing an old fashioned paper: ever try biblatex and biblatex style
From:       Paul Johnson <pauljohn32 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-07-17 19:08:27
Message-ID: 13e802630907171208y72459c6dv8c5179c9bcfe5ea8 () mail ! gmail ! com
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I took a contract that requires "old fashioned" citations in
footnotes, not in-text citations with an attached set of references.
I've not written a paper in that format in 25 years and I've been
digging about for the best way to get it done. I first checked into
jurabib, but learned that it is no longer maintained or developed, and
its author suggests we try biblatex.  OK, I'm game for that. I found a
helpful introduction in the LyX wiki.
(http://wiki.lyx.org/BibTeX/Biblatex).

I wonder if others have experimented with biblatex and LyX beyond the
information in the LyX Wiki?  Here's why I ask. I don't get output
that is exactly right, and I'm casting about for the best way to
change the style of output.

I've installed biblatex-8e (the newest) and updated csquotes to go
with it.  After some trial and error, I'm able to generate a document
that has the biblatex verbose style of citations in footnotes.
Mainly, I'm just following the LyX Wiki to get that far.  HOWEVER, the
precise formatting of the footnotes does not match the publisher's
style sheet, so I started trying to understand the configuration of
biblatex and its manual. It is 176 terse pages, helpful when you
understand quite a bit already, probably not helpful otherwise.  I'm
pretty determined as Linux users go and have written some
documentation for new users (http://wiki.lyx.org/BibTeX/Introduction).
 I've designed bst files in the past for bibtex, but biblatex does not
have any simple scripts to create customized styles.  Furthermore, it
appears to me that customized styles for biblatex on CTAN may "break"
biblatex.

I came to that conclusion after I lookeded for a short-cut by using
the pre-existing styles on the CTAN like "biblatex-mla" and
"biblatex-chicago-df". The biblatex-mla style doesn't work on my
system--I can't even compile the example tex files.  That could be due
to a change inside biblatex, I don't know.

I can get biblatex-chicago to work, but the steps needed to make it go
are not consistent with the LyX module on the LyX/biblatex wiki page.
It is necessary in LyX to remove the biblatex module. Even then, it is
probably not worth the effort. For reasons I don't understand,
biblatex-chicago does not accept all of the options that biblatex
accepts. One of the most handy things about biblatex is the style
option natbib=true option. In LyX, you can "fool" the system by using
natbib citations that biblatex will convert to its format. The
biblatex-chicago package does not accept that option, and so one must
be absolutely sure in the LyX document that natbib citations are not
used.  Otherwise, a ton of latex errors will follow. Only plain \cite
will work, and inside LyX I had the trouble that the Document
Bibliography setting kept reverting to natbib, even though I would
repeatedly set it to 'default'. (Turned out the document had a  line
after the preamble that said "\use_default_options true"  and that was
causing LyX to unset my settings.)  After I got biblatex-chicago to
work, I concluded it was a waste of effort.  I don't think
biblatex-chicago output is a whole lot closer to my final format than
biblatex's builtin verbose style.

I conclude that biblatex users ought to stick with the built-in
biblatex styles, and that if specialized output is needed, one ought
to hack the provided files in the biblatex distribution.

One of the problems I had with biblatex's verbose footnote citations
was that the document issn and URLs were being included. I had a bunch
of ordinary journal citations from JSTOR that I gathered into BiBTeX
with the super-handy "citeulike" system. The citations were fine,
except they include some fields I consider extraneous, such as the
JSTOR download URL. Instead of deleting the issn and URL info in the
bib file, I wanted to adjust the style.  in the biblatex config files,
there is a file "standard.bbx" and one can "comment out" the
bothersome fields with % signs:

Here's what it looks like on lines 38-46

  \setunit{\bibpagespunct}%
  \printfield{pages}
  \newunit\newblock
  %\printfield{issn}%
  %\newunit\newblock
  %\printfield{doi}%
  %\newunit\newblock
  %\usebibmacro{eprint}
  %\newunit\newblock
  %\usebibmacro{url+urldate}%

In addition, for some reason I don't understand, all journal citations
inserted the letters "In:" before every journal name. I've never need
"In:" except for proceedings or collections.

The offending bit is in standard.bbx, on lines 637-639:

\newbibmacro*{in:}{%
  \bibstring{in}\addcolon
  \setunit{\space}}

and commenting out the middle like eliminates the "In:" from the output.

For me, this has been hard work.  I've not found a biblatex email list
or support forum.  The biblatex support page on sourceforge is sparse;
It simply recommends we go discuss in the Usenet in comp.text.tex.  I
would do that, except I have not found a way to post in the Usenet
since my ISP eliminated Usenet service a year ago.

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas
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