# Biber (LaTeX)

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**Biber** is a [bibliography](/source/Bibliography) information processing program that works in conjunction with the [LaTeX](/source/LaTeX) package BibLaTeX and offers full [Unicode](/source/Unicode) support.[4]

Biber is a widely used replacement for the [BibTeX](/source/BibTeX) software. Both generate a [bibliography](/source/Bibliography) in [LaTeX](/source/LaTeX), but Biber offers a large superset of BibTeX functionality. It also offers full [Unicode](/source/Unicode) support, which is hard to achieve with BibTeX. Given the same data file as input, biber should output a functionally identical .bbl file as BibTeX.[4]

Biber is written in [Perl](/source/Perl) and includes the following features:

- full [Unicode](/source/Unicode) support
- user-definable mapping and suppression of fields
- multiple bibliography lists
- no memory limitations, and extensibility.

Some LaTeX packages have an explicit dependence on BibTeX itself and will not work with biber. The most important example is natbib, which provides style options for citation references.[5] However, natbib functionality can largely be recovered by using the natbib option to BibLaTeX, which is the [LaTeX](/source/LaTeX) package for processing citation references that is commonly used in conjunction with biber.[6]

## References

1. ["plk/biber: Backend processor for BibLaTeX"](https://github.com/plk/biber). *[GitHub](/source/GitHub)*. 26 August 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2019.

1. ["Contributors to plk/biber"](https://github.com/plk/biber/graphs/contributors). *GitHub*. Retrieved 30 August 2019.

1. ["Biber Project Member List"](https://sourceforge.net/p/biblatex-biber/_members/). *[SourceForge](/source/SourceForge)*. Retrieved 30 August 2019.

1. ["Biber: A BibTeX replacement for users of BibLaTeX"](https://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/). *biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net*. Retrieved 26 January 2013.

1. Daly, Patrick W. ["Natural Sciences Citations and References (Author–Year and Numerical Schemes) \[natbib.pdf\]"](https://web.archive.org/web/20210118231823/https://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/natbib/natbib.pdf). *texdoc.net*. Archived from [the original](https://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/latex/natbib/natbib.pdf) on 2021-01-18. Retrieved 3 February 2017.

1. ["BibLaTeX – Sophisticated Bibliographies in LaTeX"](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/biblatex?lang=en). *CTAN.org*. Retrieved 3 February 2017.

## External links

- [Explanation of biber vs BibTeX, biblatex vs natbib](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/25701/bibtex-vs-biber-and-biblatex-vs-natbib/25702#25702)
- [How to transition from natbib/bibtex to biber](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/5091/what-to-do-to-switch-to-biblatex#5105)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Biber (LaTeX)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biber_(LaTeX)) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biber_(LaTeX)?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.