Bug 307437

Summary:	Kile does not remember BibTeX/BibLaTeX setting
Product:	[Applications] kile	Reporter:	Martin <martin.ruessler>
Component:	user interface	Assignee:	Michel Ludwig <michel.ludwig>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	minor	CC:	abhinav.s.deshpande, flyos, reescf, twelho
Priority:	NOR
Version:	trunk-kde4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
See Also:	https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408890
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Martin 2012-09-26 14:17:54 UTC

If you go to LaTeX menu -> Bibliography -> Settings you can specify whether you want to use BibTeX or BibLaTeX. But KiLe simply resets the setting and starts everytime with BibTeX settings.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set the Bibliography settings to BibLaTeX
2. Run a project which uses BibLaTeX
3. Close and restart Kile

Actual Results:  
I get the error '[BibTeX] finished with exit code 2'
Also, after restarting the program Kile has resetted the bibliography setting to BibTeX

Expected Results:  
Kile should remember the bibliography setting.
I don't know if Biber (in my case) is supposed to run automatically but at least I would expect the error  '[BibLaTeX] finished with exit code 2'

This is only a minor inconvenience since I can run biber manually.

kile --version:
Qt: 4.8.2
KDE Development Platform: 4.9.1
Kile: 2.9.60
Maybe you could implement a general bib backend setting and/or let the user configure it for each project.

Comment 1 reescf 2013-08-24 00:44:03 UTC

Support for BibLaTeX is generally not that good. The syntax highlighting for .bib files doesn't take account of biblatex even when the setting is corrected.

I'm wondering if a more general solution would be for kile to read the % string lines at the top of files in the way that other tex editors do. These can be used to set encoding, programme (pdflatex, luatex, xelatex etc.) on a file-by-file basis in a way which is recognised by all editors which recognise the standard. Since people often work on different platforms and in different editors and/or collaborate with people using different software, a portable solution would be ideal and the nice thing about this way of doing it is that it could be made configurable by the user e.g. via the build settings preferences.

Has any thought been given to this possibility?

Comment 2 flyos 2015-05-18 12:05:22 UTC

I think (but I have no proof) this is because Kile is hard-coded to run BibTex according to some keywords in the TeX file, and that, everytime some changes are made in the document. This was a nice feature back in the days where Biblatex was not around and Bibtex definitely the most popular bibliography backend. Now, it stands in the way of people wanting to switch to Biber while using Kile.

If this is true, there is two different fixes for this bug:
- Make the hard-coding conditional to some other Biblatex-typical keywords (say backend=biber), then do nothing, or run biber.
- Stop hard-coding this behaviour and make it optional, with a setting for a preferred bibliography backend (bibtex/biber...).

Does that makes sense?

Comment 3 abyss 2019-07-13 00:07:10 UTC

I see that Bug 408890 is essentially the same as this. I still have the bug that kile runs BibTeX instead of BibLaTeX, even when the Bibliography setting is set to `biblatex`. And this is the same error that then seeps into LivePreview as mentioned in Bug 408890.

Comment 4 Dennis Marttinen 2024-09-15 20:25:55 UTC

The core issue of bibliography backend autodetection is now fixed in master with https://invent.kde.org/office/kile/-/merge_requests/85 (see https://invent.kde.org/office/kile/-/merge_requests/85#note_1033005 for details). However, it's only available when building from master until it ends up in a release. The GUI for selecting the backend still doesn't seem to do anything or save the selection, but at least the autodetection is back so manual adjustments shouldn't be necessary in most cases.