Hi Richard, If you're just starting out, I encourage you to use biblatex. It will take a few minutes to make the switch and then you won't have to think about it. A biblatex site you find googling should tell you what you need to know.
There are several differences, but a big one is that biblatex supports a much more informative database and so can handle almost any bibliographic situation. For those of us with large legacy bibtex databases, the database differences are a real issue, but for someone just getting started this isn't such a consideration. Biblatex is the wave of the future in the LaTeX world. hth, Tom Richard Lawrence <richard.lawre...@berkeley.edu> writes: > Marcin Borkowski <mb...@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes: > >> Dnia 2014-04-05, o godz. 09:46:39 >> Richard Lawrence <richard.lawre...@berkeley.edu> napisał(a): >> >>> I have sometimes run into problems (mostly with BibTeX) when the >> >> Sorry for being off-topic, but I can't resist: *please* *don't* *use* >> *BibTeX*. On the scale of "tools that solve problems" vs. "tools that >> create problems" (cf. http://xkcd.com/1343/ ;)), it is located on the >> far right. > > Now now, the first sentence on http://www.bibtex.org/Using/ says that to > use Bibtex, "Just create a plain text file and apply what has been > explained in section BibTeX File Format."! It doesn't say anything > about how to use the manual. ;) > >> (For instance, to be able to customize its bibliography style, you >> could (a) give up, (b) use some user-friendly (or not) front-end, >> having less power than BibTeX itself (obviously!), or (c) learn >> BibTeX's own, very peculiar, stack-based ad-hoc language grown to >> describe bibliography styles. Not good. Also, if you're unlucky and >> you write in some non-English language, well, you're unlucky with >> BibTeX, especially if e.g. your name starts with a non-Latin letter. >> Etc.) > > I mostly use bibtex because that's what I learned, and none of these > issues apply to me at this (early) stage in my career. I have no need > for customizing my bibliography style. I suppose this will matter more > to me when I start sending things out for publication, but at this point > I'm still just trying to write the damn dissertation... > >> Use biblatex instead. It's more modern, it's being supported, it >> knowns that there exist things like UTF-8 and non-English languages, >> it supports more citation styles etc. > > I have heard this, but haven't investigated biblatex because I haven't > yet really felt the need. > > I keep my reading list and notes in Org, then export them to a .bib file > using org-bibtex. Does biblatex support .bib files? If not, what would > be required to support a biblatex-based workflow in Org? > > Thanks for keeping me honest! > > Best, > Richard > > > -- Thomas S. Dye http://www.tsdye.com
