BibDesk: Preview with your favourite biblatex-style

Question

I use BibDesk to organise my library and implement quotations through biblatex in my documents.

BibDesk has this feature of allowing the user to see a BiBTeX-preview (not biblatex!) of the currently selected publication at the bottom or the sidebar. You can choose between different styles (like ieeetr, alpha, abrvnat etc.).

Until now I never thought about using this preview, because (1) I did not find a style I like and (2) it does not render my biblatex commands and types properly.

So, instead I used the following .tex file (which I found somewhere on the net and modified):

% !TEX TS-program = lualatexmk
\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt, DIV=13]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[   Numbers=OldStyle,
            Ligatures=TeX]{Times New Roman}
\usepackage[british]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[    style=reading,
            abstract=false,
            abbreviate=false,
            backend=biber
                ]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{BibLaTeX.bib}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

This .tex file creates a PDF listing all the publications I have in my .bib file. With this PDF I could easily check and see whether references are properly set. However, creating this PDF file takes rather long, as my library is growing... And anyway it is rather a detour, to be honest, given that there actually is a preview feature implemented into BibDesk.

My question now is: Is it possible to preview my biblatex references with BibDesk's preview-feature using the style I used in the .tex file shown above? What do I have to change in the settings of BibDesk in order to generate a biblatex output?

Answer 1

It is possible to use biblatex with Bibdesk to generate the TeX preview.

Go to Preferences --> TeX preview

Then if you want to use XeLaTeX change the executable for pdflatex to xelatex

Then you have to change the TeX template. Based on you what you have provided a suitable template is.

\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt, DIV=13]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[   Numbers=OldStyle,
            Ligatures=TeX]{Times New Roman}
\usepackage[british]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[    style=reading,
            abstract=false,
            abbreviate=false,
            backend=bibtex
                ]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{<<File>>}
\pagestyle{empty}
\textwidth = 6.5in
\renewcommand{\refname}{}

% The following command is provided for LaTeX2RTF compatibility with amslatex.
\newif\iflatextortf
\iflatextortf
\providecommand{\bysame}{\_\_\_\_\_}
\fi

\begin{document}
\nocite{<<CiteKeys>>}   
\printbibliography
\end{document}

After that you are ready to generate the preview (I am not been able to use biber as backend). Also I would suggest to use pdflatex instead of xelatex given that the generation with xelatex is slower.