Memoir class and Biblatex/Oscola: incompatible?

Question

While I can work (now, after good help via SE) without any problem using the Biblatex Oscola style with the book class, I'm not able to make it work with the memoir class:

The preamble

\documentclass[a4paper,english]{memoir}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage{newcent,textcomp}
\usepackage[english,latin]{babel}
\usepackage[style=british]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=oscola]{biblatex}
\usepackage[titles]{tocloft}

returns an error:

|8 error| LaTeX Error: Option clash for package tocloft.

And when I comment out the eighth line, I get

Undefined control sequence. \newindex {trash}{tdx}{tnd}{Miscellaneous} \begin{document}

It'd be great if you could help. (NB: I'm wondering, moreover, whether -- for a PhD thesis (no maths involved) -- you'd advise for or against the memoir and book classes.

The problem seems to be different as was the case in Problem with memoir and biblatex together

Thank you.

Answer 1

The long-term solution will be for the oscola style to take greater care if the user uses the memoir class, which tricks oscola into thinking you have loaded the index package. For now, if you stick with memoir (no reason you shouldn't), you have a few options.

If you are going to do indexing eventually, the best thing is to add

\usepackage{imakeidx}

which is definitely one of the better indexing packages.

If you don't care about indexing, then you could do either:

\DisemulatePackage{index}

or (possibly less advisably):

\newcommand{\newindex}[4]{}

Here's a complete minimal file:

% Note the difference between memoir and (say) report
% \documentclass[a4paper,english]{report}
\documentclass[a4paper,english]{memoir}

\DisemulatePackage{index}
% \usepackage{index}% <-- you could even load it now

% Or just load imakeidx (can still \DisemulatePackage if so inclined)
% \usepackage{imakeidx}
% Or:
% \newcommand{\newindex}[4]{}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{newcent,textcomp}
\usepackage[english,latin]{babel}
\usepackage[style=british]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=oscola]{biblatex}
\begin{document}
words.
\end{document}