biber
Modern bibliography processor for BibLaTeX
TLDR
Process a BibLaTeX bibliography
SYNOPSIS
biber [options] file[.bcf]
DESCRIPTION
biber is a modern bibliography processor designed as a replacement for BibTeX, serving as the backend for the biblatex package in LaTeX documents. It provides advanced sorting, filtering, and Unicode support.
Biber reads a .bcf (biblatex control file) generated by LaTeX and produces a .bbl file containing the formatted bibliography. It supports multiple bibliography databases and offers extensive configuration options.
PARAMETERS
-O, --output_directory dir
Directory where output files will be written--output file
Output to specific file instead of basename.bbl--output_format format
Output format: bbl (default), bibtex, xml, json--input_encoding encoding
Character encoding for input files (default: UTF-8)--output_encoding encoding
Character encoding for output files (default: UTF-8)-V, --validate-datamodel
Validate data against the data model--validate-control
Schema validate the .bcf control file-q, --quiet
Log only errors; use twice to suppress all output--trace
Enable low-level tracing for debugging-l, --logfile file
Write log messages to specified file--nolog
Do not write any logfile-v, --version
Display version number
CAVEATS
Biber requires a .bcf file generated by running LaTeX with biblatex first. The typical workflow is: pdflatex -> biber -> pdflatex -> pdflatex. Biber is not a drop-in replacement for BibTeX; it requires the biblatex package.
HISTORY
Biber was created by Philip Kime and François Charette starting in 2009 to address limitations in BibTeX, particularly around Unicode support and advanced sorting. It became the recommended backend for biblatex and is now the standard for modern LaTeX bibliography processing.