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 I first checked into jurabib, but learned that it is no longer maintained or developed, and its author suggests we try biblatex.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
