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FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

I get frequently E-Mails with questions, some of which are repetitive. To avoid answering the same questions time and again, I put together a small FAQ about biblatex-dw (and biblatex).

Questions

  1. How do I install biblatex-dw?
  2. Why is there no author-year style available for biblatex-dw?
  3. I have problems with big databases and get strange error messages.
  4. The idem string is in lower case at the beginning of a footnote, but it should be in upper case (Idem).
  5. How can I change the font of titles?
  6. How can I change the order of the authors' and editors' first and last names?
  7. In my .bib file, I use pagination=column in order to cite encyclopedia articles with columns rather than with pages. This works for the text, but in the bibliography p. / pp. still appears. Why is that?

Antworten

  1. How do I install biblatex-dw?
    2. See Installation.
  2. Why is there no author-year style available for biblatex-dw?
    3. I create the styles primarily in order to typeset the bibliography according to my ideas, to requirements that I have to fulfil and to sensible suggestions of other users. Up to now, I did not need an author-year style, and I have no plans to create one for biblatex-dw at the moment.
  3. I have problems with big BibTeX databases. If there are more than 124 citations, I get an error with the 125th citation. The entries in the .bib file are correct. When I compile the document, I get error messages like

    Warning--I’m ignoring Jones1995’s extra "year" field
    --line 422 of file huge.bib
    Warning--I’m ignoring Jones1995’s extra "volume" field
    --line 423 of file huge.bib

    4. You have likely problems with BibTeX's capacity. The program originates from the 1980s, and memory was very limited on computers of these days. So you have to use the program bibtex8 instead of bibtex. But this is not always sufficient, because the default settings of bibtex8 are limited as well. One solution is to use the --wolfgang switch which does nothing else than increase the capacity of bibtex8. But in some cases, even this is not sufficient. Philipp Lehman suggested to use the following command to invoke bibtex8 with a very large database:

    bibtex8 --wolfgang --mcites 30000 --mentints 30000
     --mentstrs 40000 --mfields 250000 --mstrings 35000
     --mpool 750000 --csfile csfile.csf auxfile

    More about bibtex8, its various switches and their settings can be found in the biblatex manual, chapter 2.4.2: BibTeX capacity issues.
  4. The idem string is in lower case at the beginning of a footnote, but it should be in upper case (Idem).
    5. You have to use the command \Cite instead of \cite at the beginning of footnotes. The command \footcite automatically checks for capitalization.
  5. How can I change the font of titles?
    6. biblatex provides a simple solution for that. If you would like to have the titles in italics, you can use the following command:

    \DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}

    It is also possible to differentiate between various entry types, e.g. to have journal articles in quotes:

    \DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\mkbibquote{#1}}

    Thus, it is easy to customize the format of the most fields, e.g. maintitle, booktitle, journaltitle, series etc. Additionally, there are other field formats for the citations:

    \DeclareFieldFormat{citetitle}{\mkbibemph{#1}} \DeclareFieldFormat[article]{citetitle}{%
     \mkbibquote{#1}}

    The field formats defined by biblatex are to be found in the file biblatex.def. biblatex-dw redefines some of the field formats. The definitions are allocated to the files authortitle-dw.bbx and standard-dw.cbx.
  6. How can I change the order of the authors' and editors' first and last names?
    7. This is managed by the name formats which are defined in the file biblatex.def. I cannot go into the details here, but the order can be customized using the bibmacros name:last-first and name:first-last. You have to pass four arguments to these bibmacros. The following eight arguments are the possible values:

    #1 = last name
    #2 = last name (initials)
    #3 = first name
    #4 = first name (initials)
    #5 = name prefix, a.k.a. von part
    #6 = name prefix (initials)
    #7 = name affix, a.k.a. junior part
    #8 = name affix (initials)

    The citations use the name format labelname, whereas the bibliography is using the name format sortname. In the remaining cases the name format default is used.

    If you would like to reverse the order of first and last names and have the first names abbreviated, for instance, resulting in Lastname, F., you could use the following:

    \DeclareNameFormat{labelname}{%
     \ifuseprefix
      {\usebibmacro{name:last-first}{#1}{#4}{#5}{#8}}
      {\usebibmacro{name:last-first}{#1}{#4}{#6}{#8}}%
     \usebibmacro{name:andothers}}

  7. In my .bib file, I use pagination=column in order to cite encyclopedia articles with columns rather than with pages. This works for the text, but in the bibliography p. / pp. still appears. Why is that?
    8. The field pagination holds only the pagination type for citations. There is an additional field bookpagination for the bibliography. This field has to be defined as columns (or the appropriate value you need).
 
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