biblatex-apa and Unicode characters

Question

When I use one of the default styles in biblatex, Unicode characters are correctly printed in the bibliography. When I use the biblatex-apa package, on the other hand, (adding the option style = apa when loading the biblatex package), many fields display these characters as jibberish sequences, but other fields display them correctly. Here's an example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec,xunicode,xltxtra} % XeLaTeX
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text} % support TeX conventions like ``--''
\setmainfont{Linux Libertine O}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style = apa, backend = biber    ]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{test2.bib}

\begin{document}
Clearly Bj{\char"00F8}rn V{\char"00E5}ge likes the letters {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5} a lot \parencite{author1}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

My .bib-file:

@ARTICLE{author1,
    AUTHOR = "Bj{\char"00F8}rn V{\char"00E5}ge",
    TITLE = "A title with {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    JOURNALTITLE = "The {J}ournal of {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    YEAR = "2011",
    ADDENDUM = "An addendum with {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    ANNOTATOR = "The annotator is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    COMMENTATOR = "The commentator is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    EDITOR = "P{\char"00F8}lsa S{\char"00E6}b{\char"00F8}",
    ISSUE = "The issue of {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    ISSUETITLE = "The issuetitle is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    ISSUESUBTITLE = "The issuesubtitle is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    JOURNALSUBTITLE = "The journalsubtitle is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    NOTE = "The note says {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    NUMBER = "5",
    PAGES = "100--200",
    SERIES = "The series of {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    SUBTITLE = "The subtitle is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    TITLEADDON = "The titleaddon is {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}",
    TRANSLATOR = "The translator's name was {\char"00E6}{\char"00F8}{\char"00E5}"}

Answer 1

Please try biber 1.2 from the development folder on SourceForge. It will now convert \char constructions to Unicode internally which is necessary anyway for sorting etc.

Answer 2

The problem seems to lie with the command \MakeSentenceCase. You can try this as a workaround:

\makeatletter
\renewrobustcmd*{\MakeSentenceCase}{%
  \@ifstar}
\makeatother

There’s a bug report here: https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/24

Note

Biber version 1.2 is released. It fixes this problem.