[XeTeX] Polyglossia and BibLaTeX

[Gareth Hughes]

Joachim Trinkwitz wrote:
> Hi Gareth,

Thank you for this reply, Joachim.

> Well, it looks like that by now there are not so many XeTeX users who
> know about the advantages of biblatex in comparison to the normal
> bibtex facilities in LaTeX or the numerous other bibtex related
> packages.

With talk of documentation in the air, a XeTeX way to handle with
bibliographies is clearly something that needs to be documented.

> According to the excellent biblatex manual, there are two bibtex
> entry fields who could help you with hyphenation problems: 'language'
> and 'hyphenation'. Have you tried these? If polyglossia manages to
> pretend being babel for biblatex, this should work.

The BibLaTeX manual is good, but there are some things that aren't
clear, like "Languages may be specified literally or as localization
keys. If localization keys are used, the prefix 'lang' is omissible".
I'm not entirely sure what that means. One problem might be that
BibLaTeX handles only a small number of Latin-script languages. It is
not clear how the preamble options 'language' and 'babel' and the entry
fields 'language' and 'hyphenation', and what Polyglossia might be doing
behind the scenes.

> But it would be best to contact Philipp Lehmann, the maintainer of
> biblatex, and urge him to implement polyglossia as a second language
> interface.

I've spoken with him on comp.text.tex, but that's probably not the best
place to have a conversation about this.

Thanks,

Gareth.

-- 
Gareth Hughes
Doctoral candidate in Syriac studies

Department of Eastern Christianity
Oriental Institute
Pusey Lane
Oxford
OX1 2LE

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