Biber (LaTeX)

{{Short description|Bibliography information processing program}}

{{Infobox software

| name = Biber

| logo =

| screenshot =

| caption =

| collapsible =

| author = Philip Kime and François Charette{{cite web |title=plk/biber: Backend processor for BibLaTeX |url=https://github.com/plk/biber |website=GitHub |accessdate=30 August 2019 |date=26 August 2019}}

| developer = Philip Kime, Ken Brown, Nikola Lečić, François Charette, moewe, Alexander Krumeich, Boris Veytsman, Apostolos Syropoulos{{cite web |title=Contributors to plk/biber |url=https://github.com/plk/biber/graphs/contributors |website=GitHub |accessdate=30 August 2019}}{{cite web |title=Biber Project Member List |url=https://sourceforge.net/p/biblatex-biber/_members/ |website=SourceForge |accessdate=30 August 2019}}

| released =

| latest release version = {{wikidata|property|edit|P348}}

| latest release date = {{start date and age|{{wikidata|qualifier|single|P348|P577}}}}

| latest preview version =

| latest preview date =

| operating system =

| platform = Cross-platform

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| language = English

| programming language = Perl

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| repo = {{URL|https://github.com/plk/biber}}

| license = Artistic License 2.0

| website = {{official website}}

}}

Biber is a bibliography information processing program that works in conjunction with the LaTeX package BibLaTeX and offers full Unicode support.{{cite web |url=https://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/ |title=Biber: A BibTeX replacement for users of BibLaTeX |website=biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net |accessdate=26 January 2013}}

Biber is a widely used replacement for the BibTeX software. Both generate a bibliography in LaTeX, but Biber offers a large superset of BibTeX functionality. It also offers full Unicode support, which is hard to achieve with BibTeX. Given the same data file as input, biber should output a functionally identical .bbl file as BibTeX.

Biber is written in Perl and includes the following features:

• full Unicode support
• user-definable mapping and suppression of fields
• multiple bibliography lists
• no memory limitations, and extensibility.

Some LaTeX packages have an explicit dependence on BibTeX itself and will not work with biber. The most important example is natbib, which provides style options for citation references.{{cite web |url=https://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/natbib/natbib.pdf |title=Natural Sciences Citations and References (Author–Year and Numerical Schemes) [natbib.pdf] |last=Daly |first=Patrick W. |website=texdoc.net |access-date=3 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210118231823/https://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/natbib/natbib.pdf |archive-date=2021-01-18 |url-status=dead}} However, natbib functionality can largely be recovered by using the natbib option to BibLaTeX, which is the LaTeX package for processing citation references that is commonly used in conjunction with biber.{{Cite web |url=https://www.ctan.org/pkg/biblatex?lang=en |title=BibLaTeX – Sophisticated Bibliographies in LaTeX |website=CTAN.org |access-date=3 February 2017}}