output-safechars in tool mode

[thorade]

According to http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/57743/8569 accented characters and umlauts in the bib file should be written as {\"a} or {\^e},
but when using biber in tool mode with output_safechars I get
{\"{a}} and {\^{e}}.
Is that the intended behavior?

[plk]

Those comments are correct for bibtex but not for biber. biber can handle the \"{a} case and sorting issues with such macro encodings are irrelevant as everything is converted into UTF-8 internally for sorting. So, yes, that's the intended behaviour at the moment.

[thorade]

Thanks for the answer, even though I still did not understand why the umlauts are encoded this way with two braces.
As you say this is the inteded behavior, I'll just close this issue and live with it.

PS: I personally use UTF8 and LuaLaTeX with biber and Biblatex,
but in one project we are writing a report using pandoc and markdown (and an Ascii bib file).

[thorade]

Probably also intended!?
with the command biber --tool output_encoding=UTF8 references.bib
M{\"u}ller will be converted to M{ü}ller

[plk]

The reason for all this is because parsing these macros is very tricky and some standards have to be imposed. However, this last thing you mention is fixed in biber 2.1

[thorade]

One more question:
Can I completely disable processing of the data?
In other words, can I use the --output_align and --output-indent=2 and --output_fieldcase=lower but leave the content and encoding as it is, no matter how broken it is?

[plk]

Hmm, you mean not touch the TeX macros? Not really, biber needs to parse and convert to UTF-8 in order to sort etc. and outputting exactly what was in the .bib character for character in terms of fields would be very difficult.

[thorade]

OK, then just leave everything as it is.
Thanks for answering all my questions, and of course thanks for biber!

[thorade]

Note to myself: Biber 2.1 fixed the double curly braces not only for UTF-8 output but also for the --output_safechars case