TeX4ht and biblatex

The very powerful LaTeX bibliography processing package namely, biblatex.sty often clashes with TeX4ht. I do not have much knowledge about the innards of biblatex. However, I could fix problems found in biblatex.4ht consequent to two previous revisions. Now one more revision had taken place, as we can expect, TeX4ht fails to work with current version of biblatex (v. 1.7). Therefore, one more revision of biblatex.4ht becomes necessary which has been done now. Since biblatex is widely used by LaTeX users and many biblatex users also deploy TeX4ht for generating HTML versions of their documents, it has now become an absolute necessity to maintain biblatex.4ht in such a way that each revision of the package also triggers a newer releases of biblatex.4ht. Developers of biblatex have notified that we are going to get a major revision (v. 2.0), so we have to work hard to catch up with new releases.

biblatex package provides many options which are very useful to authors, at the same time, it raises problems of compatibility with TeX4ht. Therefore, in order to verify compatibility with all options, I have taken all the example files provided with biblatex bundle and tried to generate HTML versions of the documents. The names of all files tested are given below. A brief description of the file as provided in those files are also given for the benefit of the readers of this post. Download links to archives of each file containing, original LaTeX source of the example file; PDF and HTML outputs; all auxiliary files generated by PDFLaTeX, TeX4ht, biber, makeindex (wherever applicable), new version of biblatex.4ht and bib database are provided. A link to an archive that has all the example files and related stuff is also provided, in case, someone wants everything in one go.

A small modification has been added to all the source files. Since, biber is the best backend for biblatex, I have introduced the option backend=biber to the package loading line in all the example files.

01-introduction

This file briefly presents the main citation commands. It also illustrates the typical structure of a document based on biblatex.

Download link: 01-introduction.zip

10-references-per-section

This file demonstrates a setup typically used in a collection of articles by different authors, such as a conference proceedings volume for example. Each article is presented as a separate chapter with its own bibliography. The citation labels are local to the ‘refsection’ environments.

Download link: 10-references-per-section.zip

11-references-by-section

This file is similar to the ‘per section’ example except that all references are printed at the end of the document. The citation labels are still local to the ‘refsection’ environments.

Download link: 11-references-by-section.zip

12-references-by-segment

This file differs from the ‘by section’ example in that the citation labels are assigned globally. They are not local to the ‘refsegment’ environments.

Download link: 12-references-by-segment.zip

13-references-by-keyword

It is common requirement to subdivide a bibliography by certain criteria. This example demonstrates how to use keyword filters to subdivide the list of references into primary and secondary sources. The keyword filter depends on the ‘keywords’ fields in the bib file.

Download link: 13-references-by-keyword.zip

14-references-by-category

This example will yield the same output as the ‘keywords’ example but the approach is different. Instead of adding the filter criteria to the bib file, we assign keys to categories in the document preamble and use ‘category’ filters to create a subdivided bibliography.

Download link: 14-references-by-category.zip

15-references-by-type

This example demonstrates how to subdivide a bibliography by type, using ‘type’ filters.

Download link: 15-references-by-type.zip

19-alphabetic-prefixed

Prefixes also work with alphabetic the styles.

Download link: 19-alphabetic-prefixed.zip

20-indexing-basic

This file demonstrates indexing with the ‘makeidx’ package. This file is processed as given after the download link.

Download link: 20-indexing-basic.zip

  latex        file
  bibtex/biber file
  latex        file
  makeindex    file
  latex        file

21-indexing-advanced

This file demonstrates indexing with the ‘index’ package. This file is processed as provided after the download link.

Download link: 21-indexing-advanced.zip

  latex        file
  bibtex/biber file
  latex        file
  makeindex -o file.ind file.idx = makeindex file
  makeindex -o file.nnd file.ndx
  makeindex -o file.tnd file.tdx
  latex        file

30-style-numeric

This file presents the ‘numeric’ style.

Download link: 30-style-numeric.zip

31-style-numeric-comp

This file presents the ‘numeric-comp’ style.

Download link: 31-style-numeric-comp.zip

32-style-numeric-verb

This file presents the ‘numeric-verb’ style.

Download link: 32-style-numeric-verb.zip

40-style-alphabetic

This file presents the ‘alphabetic’ style.

Download link: 40-style-alphabetic.zip

41-style-alphabetic-verb

This file presents the ‘alphabetic-verb’ style.

Download link: 41-style-alphabetic-verb.zip

50-style-authoryear

This file presents the ‘authoryear’ style.

Download link: 50-style-authoryear.zip

51-style-authoryear-ibid

This file presents the ‘authoryear-ibid’ style.

Download link: 51-style-authoryear-ibid.zip

52-style-authoryear-comp

This file presents the ‘authoryear-comp’ style.

Download link: 52-style-authoryear-comp.zip

53-style-authoryear-icomp

This file presents the ‘authoryear-icomp’ style.

Download link: 53-style-authoryear-icomp.zip

61-style-authortitle-ibid

This file presents the ‘authortitle-ibid’ style.

Download link: 61-style-authortitle-ibid.zip

62-style-authortitle-comp

This file presents the ‘authortitle-comp’ style.

Download link: 62-style-authortitle-comp.zip

63-style-authortitle-icomp

This file presents the ‘authortitle-icomp’ style.

Download link: 63-style-authortitle-icomp.zip

64-style-authortitle-terse

This file presents the ‘authortitle-terse’ style.

Download link: 64-style-authortitle-terse.zip

65-style-authortitle-tcomp

This file presents the ‘authortitle-tcomp’ style.

Download link: 65-style-authortitle-tcomp.zip

66-style-authortitle-ticomp

This file presents the ‘authortitle-ticomp’ style.

Download link: 66-style-authortitle-ticomp.zip

71-style-verbose-ibid

This file presents the ‘verbose-ibid’ style.

Download link: 71-style-verbose-ibid.zip

72-style-verbose-note

This file presents the ‘verbose-note’ style.

Download link: 72-style-verbose-note.zip

73-style-verbose-inote

This file presents the ‘verbose-inote’ style.

Download link: 73-style-verbose-inote.zip

74-style-verbose-trad1

This file presents the ‘verbose-trad1’ style.

Download link: 74-style-verbose-trad1.zip

75-style-verbose-trad2

This file presents the ‘verbose-trad2’ style.

Download link: 75-style-verbose-trad2.zip

76-style-verbose-trad3

This file presents the ‘verbose-trad3’ style.

Download link: 76-style-verbose-trad3.zip

82-style-debug

This file presents the ‘debug’ style.

Download link: 82-style-debug.zip

biblatex-1-7-examples

All the above files in a single archive.

Download link: biblatex-1-7-examples.zip

However not all files did pass through my tests. The following files need further debugging:

1. 02-annotations.tex
2. 16-numeric-prefixed-1.tex
3. 17-numeric-prefixed-2.tex
4. 18-numeric-hybrid.tex
5. 60-style-authortitle.tex
6. 70-style-verbose.tex
7. 80-style-reading.tex
8. 81-style-draft.tex

TODO

1. The above files will be tested, biblatex.4ht will be modified and will be updated soon.
2. Auto-recognition of biblatex version and switching between different versions of biblatex.4ht without user intervention.
3. Updating TeX4ht literate sources.