To parse BibTeX format files, Biber uses a C library called "btparse" which is, for all intents and purposes, 99.9% compatible with BibTeX. So, You should rarely have problem using Biber as a drop-in replacement for BibTeX. As mentioned by others, the issue is rather the slightly different data model which biblatex has compared with the data model in BibTeX.
So, your question really relates to the difference in data models between plain BibTeX and BibLaTeX, regardless of whether you are using Biber as the biblatex backend. Be aware that in the future, around BibLaTeX 2.x, BibTeX will no longer be supported as a biblatex backend as it has too many limitations. Of course BibTeX format data files will always be supported.
The more important question is, as you mention, what the advantages of Biber might be even if you are not using any of the biblatex data model specifics. Here are some advantages of Biber in this respect (you can get an idea by searching for the string "Biber only" in the biblatex manual), omitting the features which require data source changes:
- Support of data sources other than
.bib (currently RIS, Zotero RDF/XML, Endnote XML)
- Support for remote data sources (
.bib files available via ftp or http)
- Support of other output formats (in 0.9.8 it will support GraphViz .dot output for
data visualisation and conversion to the planned biblateXML format)
- Full Unicode 6.0 support (including file names and citation keys)
- A sorting mechanism which I think is probably as good or better than any commercial
product - full Unicode, multi-field, per-field case and direction, CLDR aware and
completely user configurable. BibTeX doesn't come close in this regard.
- Automatic name and name list disambiguation. I think this is quite an impressive feature.
See section 4.11.4 of the
biblatex manual for a very good explanation of this with examples.
- Completely customisable crossref inheritance rules. BibTeX has a very basic static rule
only.
- Automatic encoding and decoding, including UTF-8 <-> LaTeX macros
- Very flexible configuration file "sourcemap" option which can be used to change the
.bib data as it is read by Biber, without changing the actual data source itself. You
can use this to do all sorts of things like drop certain fields, add fields,
conditionally drop/add fields, change fields using full Perl 5.14 regular expressions
(see Biber manual section 3.1.2).
This last feature is particularly interesting for you as you can potentially map your pure BibTeX .bib files into the biblatex model on the fly as Biber reads them but without altering the files. It's also very useful for dropping fields like abstract which often cause trouble due to LaTeX reserved characters.
There are also some other features implemented in Biber which are available in BibLaTeX 2.x:
- Customisable labels
- Multiple bibliographies in the same refsection with their own sorting/filtering
- "Related" entries - a general solution to the issue of all these "reprinted as",
"translated as" etc. requirements.
I forgot to mention that Biber automatically applies the BibLaTeX field and entrytype mappings (address -> location etc.) mentioned in the documentation. It does this by implementing some driver-level source mappings (see \DeclareSourcemap and its variants in the biblatex documentation).
It is possible to insert additional material in a bbl generated by biber/BibLaTX combination. You can add
\field{mynote}{<TEXT OF THE NOTE>}
in the appropriate entries. The one has to give the instruction to print it. A possible way to insert at the end of a bibenty (and in bold) is:
\DeclareFieldFormat{mynote}{\textbf{#1}}
\AtEveryBibitem{
\csappto{blx@bbx@\thefield{entrytype}}{\iffieldundef{mynote}{}{\par\printfield{mynote}}}
}
Successive calls to biber will erase the modifications in the bbl file.
An alternative is to use bibexport to create a new BibTeX file containing only the entries in the current tex file, and then using the file generated by bibexport and inserting the notes specific to the paper there.
A further alternative is to use BibLaTeX facilities for external files. For this the option loadfiles has to be explicitly activated
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[style=nature,loadfiles=true]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{key1,
author = {Author, John},
title = {Title},
journal = {A Journal},
year = 2012,
}
@article{key2,
author = {Author2, John},
title = {Title},
journal = {A Journal},
year = 2012,
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{Notes/note-key2.tex}
Note for \cite{key2}.
\endinput
\end{filecontents}
\DeclareFieldFormat{annotation}{\textbf{#1}}
\renewbibmacro*{annotation}{
\IfFileExists{Notes/note-\thefield{entrykey}.tex}{\par}{}
\printfile[annotation]{Notes/note-\thefield{entrykey}.tex}
}
\AtEveryBibitem{
\csappto{blx@bbx@\thefield{entrytype}}{\usebibmacro{annotation}}
}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
Notes: Here I use a Notes directory that must be created before compiling the file. For the note files one can decide to use filecontents to include them in the main source file or to generate independently only one time.
Best Answer
I am most familiar with JabRef. It has Unicode support and a
biblatexmode. You can also customize JabRef to have any entry type and field you can think of. There is no built-in cross-referencing support in JabRef, but you can set up the corresponding fields yourself.The newest version of Citavi (3.1) has
biblatexsupport as well, as the announcement (at least in German) states. This might not be complete, since it is the first version withbiblatexsupport. Citavi has a built-in cross-referencing functionality, but the workflow with LaTeX is not intuitive, as Citavi does not store the data in .bib format.JabRef works on all platforms (with Java), Citavi is Windows only. Development for a Mac version have stopped in November 2011 (Link).