[Tex/LaTex] ! Paragraph ended before \name was complete

accentsbiberbiblatexbraces

I recently upgraded my texlive packages at home and I cannot compile my document anymore due to the references. I googled for it for several days already and I cannot find anything recent about this issue (it does pop up from time to time apparently). Most of my entries are extracted from ADS (particularly the ones that give me troubles).

Here is a minimal entry with one of such troublesome entries.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{2013APh....50...26A,
  author = {{Abeysekara}, A.~U. and {Alfaro}, R. and {Alvarez}, C. and {{\'A}lvarez}, J.~D. and
    {Tollefson}, K. and {Torres}, I. and {Ukwatta}, T.~N. and {Villase{\~n}or}, L. and
    {Weisgarber}, T. and {Westerhoff}, S. and {Wisher}, I.~G. and
    {Wood}, J. and {Yodh}, G.~B. and {Younk}, P.~W. and {Zaborov}, D. and
    {Zepeda}, A. and {Zhou}, H.},
  title = "{Sensitivity of the high altitude water Cherenkov detector to sources of multi-TeV gamma rays}",
  journal = {Astroparticle Physics},
  archivePrefix = "arXiv",
  eprint = {1306.5800},
  primaryClass = "astro-ph.HE",
  keywords = {TeV gamma-ray astronomy, Water cherenkov, Cosmic ray},
    year = 2013,
  month = dec,
  volume = 50,
  pages = {26-32},
  doi = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2013.08.002},
  adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013APh....50...26A},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[language=english, style=numeric-comp, sorting=none, backend=biber, natbib=true, doi=false, bibencoding=utf8, isbn=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname}

\begin{document}
This is a simple document\cite{2013APh....50...26A}
\end{document}

The error I get is

Runaway argument?
{{{hash=8b556f9238232cff536971111edddb4b}{family={{Abeysekara}}, fami\ETC.
! Paragraph ended before \name was complete.
<to be read again> 
               \par 
l.140   
?

I guess the issue comes from the combination of curly braces + accents and other 'weird characters'.

I am using biber 2.10 and texlive 2017.45XXX (current archlinux's version).

At work, where it works fine, I'm using texlive 2017.44XXX and biber 2.7

Anything I can do about it apart from trying to downgrade my texlive (which is an ugly solution)?

Best Answer

Egreg's recommendations are very good, but it is easy to understand your situation. I tried to narrow down what was causing the problem and, as it turns out, it is one of the names {{\'A}lvarez}. Somehow, that is resulting in a .bbl file with unbalanced braces, which gives you problems in your compilation. Once you are using bibencoding=utf8 you can change it to {Álvarez} and get rid of the error. I don't have your other problematic cases at hand, but my guess is the doble braces at the start cause the problem (even though I don't understand why they should cause a problem at all). If this is the case, the number of instances for you to fix would be already much, much smaller.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{2013APh....50...26A,
  author = {{Abeysekara}, A.~U. and {Alfaro}, R. and {Alvarez}, C. and {Álvarez}, J.~D. and {Tollefson}, K. and {Torres}, I. and {Ukwatta}, T.~N. and {Villase{\~n}or}, L. and {Weisgarber}, T. and {Westerhoff}, S. and {Wisher}, I.~G. and {Wood}, J. and {Yodh}, G.~B. and {Younk}, P.~W. and {Zaborov}, D. and {Zepeda}, A. and {Zhou}, H.},
  title = "{Sensitivity of the high altitude water Cherenkov detector to sources of multi-TeV gamma rays}",
  journal = {Astroparticle Physics},
  archivePrefix = "arXiv",
  eprint = {1306.5800},
  primaryClass = "astro-ph.HE",
  keywords = {TeV gamma-ray astronomy, Water cherenkov, Cosmic ray},
    year = 2013,
  month = dec,
  volume = 50,
  pages = {26-32},
  doi = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2013.08.002},
  adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013APh....50...26A},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[language=english, style=numeric-comp, sorting=none, backend=biber, natbib=true, bibencoding=utf8, doi=false, isbn=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
This is a simple document\cite{2013APh....50...26A}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex authoryear-comp and name aliases

Here is one approach which gives exactly the result you want. Put this in your biber.conf:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config>
  <sourcemap>
    <maps datatype="bibtex" map_overwrite="1">
      <map maptype="field">
        <map_pair map_source="AUTHOR"/>
        <also_set map_field="SHORTAUTHOR" map_origfieldval="1"/>
        <also_set map_field="SORTNAME" map_origfieldval="1"/>
      </map>
      <map maptype="field">
        <map_pair map_source="SHORTAUTHOR" map_match="Doe,\s*J(?:\.|ohn)(?:[ -]*)(?:P\.|Paul)*" map_replace="Doe, John Paul"/>
        <map_pair map_source="SORTNAME" map_match="Doe,\s*J(?:\.|ohn)(?:[ -]*)(?:P\.|Paul)*" map_replace="Doe, John Paul"/>
      </map>
    </maps>
  </sourcemap>
</config>

This follows the new Biber 0.9.8 semantics for the maps - the maps are processed sequentially, each depending on the results of the previous. Within a map, you can also use multiple items but items within a map which change things should not rely on the results of other other changes within the map element. Use map elements to do the sequencing. So, this first copies AUTHOR to both SHORTAUTHOR and SORTNAME and then, after that, edits these two fields to regularise some specific names. Biber DEV PDF doc will be updated soon.

It's a rather hairy regular expression but they are incredibly useful for faking semantic equivalence. This essentially renders the Does into the canonical "Doe, John Paul" format so that Biber knows that they are the same person. It's probably possible to design a regular expression to make this not so name specific but that will depend in the idiosyncracies of the name formats. For example, you could remove all "-' characters in names and also, since you are using firstinits, force all names to initials only.

EDIT: There will be a simpler syntax in Biber 0.9.8 like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config>
  <sourcemap>
    <maps datatype="bibtex" map_overwrite="1">
      <map>
        <map_step map_field_source="AUTHOR" map_match="Doe," map_final="1"/>
        <map_step map_field_set="SHORTAUTHOR" map_origfieldval="1"/>
        <map_step map_field_set="SORTNAME" map_origfieldval="1"/>
        <map_step map_field_source="SHORTAUTHOR" map_match="Doe,\s*J(?:\.|ohn)(?:[ -]*)(?:P\.|Paul)*" map_replace="Doe, John Paul"/>
        <map_step map_field_source="SORTNAME" map_match="Doe,\s*J(?:\.|ohn)(?:[ -]*)(?:P\.|Paul)*" map_replace="Doe, John Paul"/>
      </map>
    </maps>
  </sourcemap>
</config>

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

First thing to do is to add a field for the journal abbreviation to the article entrytype, journalabbr in the MWE. Therefore you need to declare a datamodel (an extra file; in the MWE I've used filecontents to simulate that) and you have to tell biblatex/biber to use it in the package options.

Then you have to modify the cite command, so it fits your needs. \citep from the authoryear-style (your citestyle) uses the \cite command. There you just have to add a switch, which checks if the field journalabbr is empty or not, and prints it out or not.

Last but not least you have to add the abbreviation fields to the entries.

MWE:

\begin{filecontents}{min.bib}
@article{boisson2003unexpected,
  title={Unexpected protein families including cell defense components feature in the N-myristoylome of a higher eukaryote},
  author={Boisson, B. and Giglione, Carmela and Meinnel, Thierry},
  journal={Journal of Biological Chemistry},
  journalabbr={JBC},
  year={2003},
  publisher={ASBMB}
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\ProvidesFile{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field,datatype=literal]{journalabbr}
\DeclareDatamodelEntryfields[article]{journalabbr}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[fontsize=11pt, paper=a4, ngerman, DIV=calc]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[german=quotes]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,isbn=false,natbib=true, citestyle=authoryear,bibstyle=authoryear,backend=biber,maxnames=1,maxcitenames=1,
,datamodel=authorjabbryear%added!
] {biblatex}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{ngerman}{ andothers = {{et\,al\adddot}} }

\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%from authoryear.cbx
  \iffieldundef{shorthand}
    {\ifthenelse{\ifnameundef{labelname}\OR\iffieldundef{labelyear}}
       {\usebibmacro{cite:label}%
        \setunit{\addspace}}
       {\printnames{labelname}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}}%
     \iffieldundef{journalabbr}{}{%
        \printfield{journalabbr}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}%
        }%
     \usebibmacro{cite:labelyear+extrayear}}
    {\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}

\addbibresource{min.bib}

\begin{document}

\citep{boisson2003unexpected} 

How it should look like: 

(Boisson et al., JBC, 2003)

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex authoryear-comp and name aliases

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

Related Question