Dear Fellow Bibdesk Colleagues,

I am writing to ask for help using biblatex and biber in BibDesk Preview. I 
have spent several hours reading through messages on different sites, including 
this mailing list and tex.stackexchange.com <http://tex.stackexchange.com/>. I 
have tried all the suggestions that I found, without success. 

In particular, I have read through a recent thread on this list, a similar 
query by Prof. Dr. Bertolt Meyer, 

https://sourceforge.net/p/bibdesk/mailman/message/37861086

In my understanding, no solution was found? 

I tried what seemed to be the final suggestion recommended in that thread for 
the BibDesk previewtemplate.tex, 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{<<File>>.bib}  
\pagestyle{empty}
\textwidth = 6.5in
\begin{document}
\nocite{<<CiteKeys>>}    
\printbibliography
\end{document}

I also made the recommended changes in BibDesk TeX-Typeset Preview settings, 
changing to 

/Library/TeX/texbin/biber
Unicode (UTF-8)

I encountered errors similar to those described by Prof. Meyer, which in 
essence is that there is no bibliography to print, 

LaTeX Warning: Citation 'Stedall2003Greate' undefined on input line 13.

LaTeX Warning: Empty bibliography on input line 14.

(./bibpreview.aux)
 ***********
LaTeX2e <2023-06-01> patch level 1
L3 programming layer <2023-08-11>
 ***********

LaTeX Warning: There were undefined references.

Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file:
(biblatex)                bibpreview
(biblatex)                and rerun LaTeX afterwards.

This error appears to be the same problem that I encounter with all of the 
other suggestions that I have tried. 

When I go to the temporary directory that BibDesk creates, I find that there is 
no bibpreview.bbl file: 

drwxr-xr-x  10 rhart  staff     320 Aug 25 18:52 .
drwx------   4 rhart  staff     128 Aug 25 15:18 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     247 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.aux
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff  133377 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.bcf
-rw-r--r--@  1 rhart  staff    1937 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.bib
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff   21869 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.log
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff       0 Aug 25 16:14 bibpreview.out
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff    2469 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.run.xml
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     311 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.tex
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     705 Aug 25 18:36 texput.log
 
If I run biber and then pdflatex in Terminal, I get the desired output PDF 
(though not displayed in BibDesk Preview of course)

drwxr-xr-x  13 rhart  staff     416 Aug 25 18:57 .
drwx------   4 rhart  staff     128 Aug 25 15:18 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     393 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.aux
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff    4080 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.bbl
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff  133377 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.bcf
-rw-r--r--@  1 rhart  staff    1937 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.bib
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff    1609 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.blg
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff   22529 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.log
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff       0 Aug 25 16:14 bibpreview.out
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff   39745 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.pdf
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff    2469 Aug 25 18:57 bibpreview.run.xml
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     311 Aug 25 18:52 bibpreview.tex
-rw-r--r--   1 rhart  staff     705 Aug 25 18:36 texput.log

If I run BibDesk Preview again, bibpreview.bbl disappears, and I receive the 
same error message. 

It thus seems to me that the problem is that BibDesk is not running Biber 
properly on bibpreview.tex. 

This problem is very important to me for the following reasons: 

I must use biblatex. With biblatex-chicago I can create publishable 
bibliographies as camera ready copy. In contrast, BibTex styles are very basic 
and to be honest unusable. 
BibDesk Preview is critical to my work. The Chicago Manual of Style and 
biblatex-chicago are quite complex. Getting the output right requires many 
experiments with entry types, fields, and biblatex coding. Making changes and 
running biber and LaTex each time to see the result is excruciating. BibDesk’s 
Preview, which reruns when changes are made, is the perfect tool. 
Thank you for your kind assistance,

Roger

-----

Roger Hart <http://rhart.org/>, Ph.D.
National Endowment for the Humanities <https://www.neh.gov/> (NEH) Postdoctoral 
Fellow, Linda Hall Library <https://www.lindahall.org/> (2023–2024)
Wilson Center Fellow <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/> (2021–2022)
Fulbright U.S. Scholar <https://cies.org/> (2021)
Author, Quantum States, Quantum Entanglements: China, the U.S., and the Global 
Race for Quantum Supremacy (in progress) 
Author, Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter 
<https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/imagined-civilizations> (Johns Hopkins 
UP, 2013)
Author, The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra 
<https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/chinese-roots-linear-algebra> (Johns 
Hopkins UP, 2010)
Director, Texas Southern University China Institute <http://www.tsuci.org/> 
Professor, Department of History and Geography 
<http://www.tsu.edu/academics/colleges-and-schools/colabs/history/>, Texas 
Southern University <http://www.tsu.edu/>
Web: www.rhart.org <http://www.rhart.org/> and www.TSUCI.org 
<http://www.tsuci.org/>

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