IMPORTANT NOTE:

This is the package formerly known as biblatex-chicago-notes-df.  It
works best with the latest version (2.9a) of biblatex, and may not
work well or at all with earlier (or future) versions.  It contains
both the 15th- and 16th-edition Chicago style files, though I am now
marking the 15th-edition styles as "strongly deprecated" and am
concentrating my development time on the 16th edition.  If you have
used the package before, then you should be sure to consult the
RELEASE file to find out what alterations you may need to make to your
.bib files and document preambles to bring them up to date.  Most
particularly please note that Biber is now required for the
author-date styles, and very strongly advised for the notes &
bibliography style (version 1.9 is designed for use with the latest
biblatex).

README (version 0.9.9g, 2014-08-21):

Biblatex-chicago contains five biblatex styles implementing the
specifications of the Chicago Manual of Style in both its 15th and
16th editions.  The "notes & bibliography" style was formerly
available in the package biblatex-chicago-notes-df, and is intended
primarily for writers in the humanities.  I would encourage all users
of the 15th edition style to upgrade to the 16th: it contains many new
features, and the changes involved, being largely incremental,
generally won't require major alterations to your .bib files.  The
"author-date" style, generally favored by writers in the sciences and
social sciences, presents a somewhat different case.  The 16th edition
of the Manual has brought the presentation of sources in this style
much more into line with the notes & bibliography specification,
especially regarding the formatting of titles.  If you still require
titles to be capitalized sentence style, and article titles, for
example, not to be enclosed in quotation marks, then you may now use
the new, traditional author-date style ("authordate-trad"), which
provides these features while in all other respects following the
16th-edition specifications.  I encourage all users to upgrade to one
of these three up-to-date styles, which should now cater to nearly all
needs.  The 15th-edition styles will be marked "obsolete" in the next
major release, and I shall cease all work on them.  If, in the
meantime, you wish to continue using them, you'll need to specify
"notes15" or "authordate15" in the options when loading
biblatex-chicago.

This is a beta release, but its feature set is already fairly
extensive.  If you have used the package before you may, after
perusing the RELEASE file, want to look at the changelog at the end of
biblatex-chicago.pdf (and/or biblatex-chicago15.pdf), which contain
cross-references to more detailed explanations about how this update
will affect parts of your .bib file.  If you are just getting started,
the best way to learn the system is to read the documentation in those
same pdf files, which contain both a Quickstart section and a complete
reference guide to both notes & bibliography and author-date styles
(sections 4 and 5).  The package also contains annotated .bib files
(notes-test.bib and dates-test.bib) which each offer over 100 entries
demonstrating how to present a wide range of sources, nearly all of
them taken from the Chicago Manual of Style itself, so that you can
compare the output of your system (cms-notes-sample.tex,
cms-dates-sample.tex, cms-trad-sample.tex, cms15-notes-sample.tex,
cms15-dates-sample.tex) or my system (cms-notes-sample.pdf,
cms-dates-sample.pdf, cms-trad-sample.pdf, cms15-notes-sample.pdf,
cms15-dates-sample.pdf) with the actual examples in the Manual.

I have, wherever possible, attempted to maintain backward
compatibility with the standard biblatex styles, but there are a
significant number of situations where I have been unable to do so,
which means that switching among various styles while using the same
bibliography database will not be as simple and painless as it could
be.  If you can see ways better to preserve this compatibility, or
indeed to improve the package in any way whatsoever, please let me
know, or better yet, send a patch.  As the 16th edition styles are
relatively new, now is the time to suggest changes in field or
entry-type usage there, before questions of backward compatibility
become more pressing.  If the styles don't behave as you expect or if
you discover a bug, I'd be very happy to hear about it, but do please
read biblatex-chicago.pdf first, as you may find that your question
has already been answered there.  If you do find a bug, please send me
the .bib entry, your LaTeX preamble, and your output .log, so that I
can try to reproduce it here.  My email address is at the head of
biblatex-chicago.pdf.

Installation:

With the recent proliferation of files, I have adopted the directory
structure found in biblatex.zip, so if you want to place these files
in your TeX directory tree instead of in your working directory, I
recommend the following, which should be familiar from the main
biblatex package:

 - The twenty-one files biblatex-chicago.sty, chicago-notes.cbx,
   chicago-notes.bbx, chicago-authordate.cbx, chicago-authordate.bbx,
   chicago-authordate-trad.cbx, chicago-authordate-trad.bbx,
   chicago-notes15.cbx, chicago-notes15.bbx, chicago-authordate15.cbx,
   chicago-authordate15.bbx, cms-american.lbx, cms-british.lbx,
   cms-finnish.lbx, cms-french.lbx, cms-german.lbx, cms-icelandic.lbx,
   cms-ngerman.lbx, cms-norsk.lbx, cms-norwegian.lbx, and
   cms-nynorsk.lbx are located in the latex/ subdirectory, itself
   further subdivided into bbx/, cbx/, and lbx/.  The entire contents
   of this latex/ directory, including its subdirectories, can go in
   <TEXMFLOCAL>/tex/latex/biblatex-contrib/biblatex-chicago, where
   <TEXMFLOCAL> is the root of your local TeX installation -- for
   example, and depending on your system, /usr/share/texmf-local,
   /usr/local/texmf, or C:\Local TeX Files\.  You may need to create
   this directory first, and after copying the files there please
   remember to update your TeX file name database so that TeX can find
   them.

 - The sixteen files biblatex-chicago.tex, biblatex-chicago.pdf,
   biblatex-chicago15.tex, biblatex-chicago15.pdf
   cms-notes-sample.tex, cms-dates-sample.tex, cms-trad-sample.tex,
   cms-notes-sample.pdf, cms-dates.sample.pdf, cms-trad-sample.pdf,
   cms15-notes-sample.tex, cms15-dates-sample.tex,
   cms15-notes-sample.pdf, cms15-dates.sample.pdf, notes-test.bib, and
   dates-test.bib can all be found in the doc/ directory in the
   package archive, the last 10 in the examples/ subdirectory.  You
   can place all of this in
   <TEXMFLOCAL>/doc/latex/biblatex-contrib/biblatex-chicago.


Changelog: See the RELEASE file, and also the end of
biblatex-chicago.pdf (or biblatex-chicago15.pdf).


Copyright (c) 2008-2014 David Fussner.  This package is
author-maintained.  This work may be copied, distributed and/or
modified under the conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License,
either version 1.3 of this license or (at your option) any later
version.  The latest version of this license is in
http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt and version 1.3 or later is part
of all distributions of LaTeX version 2005/12/01 or later.  This
software is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, either
expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied
warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
