Tell me more ×
TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and related typesetting systems. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 9 down vote favorite

I have just updated my MikTeX 2.9 (I'm using Windows 7)... and surprise! My citations don't work any more and I get cryptic error messages. Panic! After a few minutes of frantic and more or less random trial and (inevitably) error attempts, I decided to read the manual. (Yep, should have started with that one!)

So I learn that biblatex 2.0 uses biber as back-end and I need to specify explicitly that I want to force it to use the old bibtex back-end. Works fine, thanks! Still, the documentation also says that if the back-end is bibtex, biblatex will revert to version 1.7. So my question is: where do I find the documentation for biblatex 1.7? (Googling didn't help...) Or for that matter documetation for older versions of LaTeX packages?

P.S. Don't tell me to switch to biber! I intend to do that... in due time. For now I have a large document that still needs some serious editing and absolutely no urge to experiment... Thanks for your understanding! :)

share|improve this question
1  
Is this it? – Scott H. Jul 29 '12 at 1:55
@ScottH.: THANKS! :) how about making it an answer? – Count Zero Jul 29 '12 at 2:00
6  
Just refer to the 2.0 documentation and ignore any content marked "biber only". The "revert" business just has to do with the fact that most development since 1.7 was made possible by biber. So with BibTeX, 2.0 is essentially the same as 1.7 (barring some bug fixes). – Audrey Jul 29 '12 at 2:03
@Mico: I do that, I use that option and all's fine, as I said in my post. I just want to have the documentation for the old version. It might be handy to spot differences compared to newer versions. Thanks anyway! :) – Count Zero Jul 29 '12 at 2:04
@Audrey: Thanks, that's reassuring, really! – Count Zero Jul 29 '12 at 2:04

2 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Here is the documentation for Biblatex 1.7.

http://www.math.upenn.edu/tex_docs/latex/biblatex/biblatex.pdf

I have no idea, in general, about where such things can be found. When I look for something like this, I find that it helps to restrict my google search to pdf and search for filetype:pdf biblatex 1.7

share|improve this answer
up vote 9 down vote

As Audrey has commented, the v2.0 documentation is still 'correct' for the BibTeX back end. Almost everything new in v2.0 compared with v1.7 is Biber-only, and is marked as such. In that sense, biblatex is broadly frozen for BibTeX users (bugs in that part will be fixed, but the open requests for features all really need Biber). So you should be fine with the current documentation, just keep an eye on the 'Biber-only' statements.

Obviously this is specific to biblatex. For a more general way to find 'old' documentation, you could look at Martin Scharrer's CTAN-Hg mirror of CTAN, or the TeX Live SVN system (provided what you want is in TL, of course).

share|improve this answer
Straight from the horse's mouth! :) – Count Zero Jul 29 '12 at 11:49

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.