biblatex-chicago does not run biber automatically in Emacs

Question

I'm using AUCTeX (version 11.90.2)+RefTeX on Emacs (version 24.5.2). While I'm using the biblatex package, if I do C-c C-c, it would suggest biber as default.

However, if I use the package biblatex-chicago instead, it would suggest that the default option is bibtex instead, even when I have the option backend=biber.

In this situation, I check that the value of the variable LaTeX-biblatex-use-Biber is t, but it is mentioned in this post that the variable LaTeX-biblatex-use-Biber would be removed since AUCTeX version 11.88 because it will be no more needed.

So how do I set biblatex-chicago to behave the same way as biblatex? Many thanks!

Answer 1

The issue here is that AUCTeX does not have a style file for biblatex-chicago. You can roll your own one which simply loads biblatex.el like this:

;;; biblatex-chicago.el --- AUCTeX style for `biblatex-chicago.sty'

(TeX-add-style-hook
 "biblatex-chicago"
 (lambda ()
   (TeX-run-style-hooks "biblatex"))
 LaTeX-dialect)

;;; biblatex-chicago.el ends here

Set the variable TeX-style-private to a directory of your choice, e.g.:

(setq TeX-style-private "~/.emacs.d/mystyles")

and save biblatex-chicago.el there.

In your .emacs, do

(setq TeX-parse-self t)

and restart Emacs and open your file.

The quick and ugly solution would be to fool AUCTeX with something like this in your preamble:

\usepackage{biblatex-chicago}
\iffalse
\usepackage{biblatex}
\fi

AUCTeX does not parse conditionals, it sees \usepackage{biblatex} and loads biblatex.el right away.