In §3.11.8 ("External Abstracts and Annotations") of the biblatex
documentation, it says that it is possible to put abstracts in external .tex
files rather than storing them in the .bib
file directly.
To do this, it says you must name the .tex
file bibabstract-citekey.tex
, where "citekey
" is the citekey for the associated entry in the .bib
file.
The documentation does not say anything about where these external abstract files should be stored. I assumed it would be possible to keep them in a local texmf
tree, but that seems to not be the case.
I've only been able to get the abstract to print when the bibabstract-citekey.tex
is in the same folder as the main .tex
file.
Am I doing something wrong, or is this the intended behavior?
Here's a three-part MWE:
main.tex
% arara: pdflatex
% arara: biber
% arara: pdflatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style=reading, % a style that prints abstracts
loadfiles=true % must be set to true for external abstract files
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-example.bib}
\begin{document}
\nocite{chomsky2013}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
biblatex-example.bib
@Article{chomsky2013,
author = {Chomsky, Noam},
doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2012.12.003},
langid = {american},
pages = {33--49},
title = {Problems of Projection},
issn = {0024-3841},
journaltitle = {Lingua},
date = {2013-06},
editor = {Rizzi, Luigi},
issuetitle = {Syntax and Cognition},
issuesubtitle = {Core Ideas and Results in Syntax},
number = {1},
volume = {130}
}
bibabstract-chomsky2013.tex
With the crystallization of the ``generative enterprise'' half a century ago, two concepts became salient: the initial state and final states of the language faculty, respectively, UG (the genetic component) and I-languages. Since then inquiry has gained far greater scope and depth. It has also led to sharpening of fundamental principles of language. At first, descriptive adequacy appeared to require rich and complex assumptions about UG. A primary goal has always been to overcome this deficiency. Core properties of concern have included compositionality, order, projection (labeling), and displacement. Early work assigned the first three to phrase structure rules and the last to the transformational component. Simplification of computational procedures suggests that compositionality and displacement (along with the ``copy theory'') fall together while order may be a reflex of sensorimotor externalization, conclusions that have far-reaching consequences. As for labeling, minimal computation restricts options to the few that have considerable empirical support.
\endinput
I'm only able to get the abstract to print when bibabstract-chomsky2013.tex
is saved in the same directory as main.tex
. It does not print when bibastract-chomsky2013.tex
is saved in a local texmf
tree (in my case, ~/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib/
).
biblatex
will find the external file so long as it is somewhere below<texmf>/tex
. Presumably, the best practice would be to create a dedicated folder such as<texmf>/tex/latex/biblatex/abstracts/
. I'll wait to answer my own question in case anyone else has a better suggestion. I figured the question is still worth asking, since this isn't mentioned in the documentation (might be worth updating the documentation). – Adam Liter Dec 2 '15 at 19:13TEXMFHOME
? I would've thought you'd have something like~/Library/texmf/{bibtex,tex,doc,...}
as the "texmf home". – jon Dec 2 '15 at 19:21biblatex-example.bib
andbibabstract-chomsky2013.bib
inside<texmf>/bibtex/bib/
and it will print everything but the abstract. It seems that external abstract files must go somewhere below<texmf>/tex/
. It'd be nice if this were documented, since the intuitive place to put the external files (at least in my mind) doesn't work.:p
– Adam Liter Dec 2 '15 at 19:24.tex
files and so need to be within thetex
hierarchy not thebibtex
hierarchy, even though they are associated with bib files... :) – Alan Munn Dec 2 '15 at 19:30:)
Alright, well, I guess I'll go ahead and answer this. @anyone: feel free to comment on or edit my answer if you think there's a better practice. – Adam Liter Dec 2 '15 at 19:35