Bug#570018: RFP: biblatex-biber -- A BibTeX replacement for users of biblatex, with full Unicode support, written in Perl.

[Markus Meier <rattynator@googlemail.com>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist

* Package name    : biblatex-biber
  Version         : 0.4.3
  Upstream Author : Francois Charette <albumasar@users.sourceforge.net>
* URL             : http://www.biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/
* License         : GPL and Artistic License
  Programming Lang: Perl
  Description     : A BibTeX replacement for users of biblatex, with
  full Unicode support, written in Perl. 

With Biber it is no longer necessary to rely on BibTeX. The objective of
the first development phase is to have a robust and reliable emulation
of the BibTeX processor with the biblatex.bst style file. In other
words, given the same .aux file as input, biber should output a
functionally identical .bbl file as BibTeX.

Biber also introduces support for a new XML format tailored specifically
for biblatex data, unimaginatively called BibLaTeXML. It owes its
inspiration partly to the BibTeXML format, but it is far more complex.
RelaXNG and W3C schemata are provided, as well as a tool for converting
.bib files to biblatexml.

The advantages of no longer being dependent upon BibTeX are obvious:
full Unicode support, no memory limitations, extensibility, etc.


Cheers
Markus