NFD UTF8 in bbl files

[perstar]

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{ref,
  author = {Mart{\'\i}},
}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\nocite{ref}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

The above yields an error, because biber will put NFD UTF8 in the bbl file, and LaTeX can't handle that. Without the inputenc it will work, because then the bcf file won't say utf8. With [backend=bibtex] this works, so there are bib files that look like this.

biber.tex says that output aways will be NFC.

[plk]

The output is always NFC - what you are seeing is just a problem with dotless i handling. To get NFD handling of letter i with accents, you add the accent to a dotted i, not a dotless i and biber was converting \i to a dotless i before the special cases which processed accented "i"s was reached. This should be fixed in the dev 1.9 version on SF now.

[perstar]

Thanks! I haven't tested it, but looking at the code I think you should do the same with dotless j as you do with dotless i.

[plk]

Good point. This is done in the dev branch.