How to number inline custom citations?

A place for users to ask each other questions, make suggestions, and discuss Bookends.
Post Reply
Philologist
Posts: 166
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:17 am

How to number inline custom citations?

Post by Philologist »

I'm working on a large annotated bibliography in Nisus Writer Pro for students about sources and reference material in literary scholarship. It's also a bibliographic research and reference manual – in two parts.

In the second, non-annotated part, the references are numbered. This is achieved by enabling "Number references" in the Formats Manager and it works well.
1.png
1.png (10.68 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

In the first part, however, custom citations should appear in a short version, followed by the string "No. ", plus a number which corresponds to the item's number in the second part, and a closing bracket ")".

2.png
2.png (37.69 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

Now here is the problem: if I use a number from the Citation Options I get the number but no custom citation. If I use a custom citation I get no number!

How can I solve this problem? I need a short custom citation AND a number.

If it's not already clear what I mean, then the following example may perhaps give a rough idea of what I have in mind:

17th Century
1st part

The best Shakespeare bibliography used to be the one by Doe (John Doe: Shakespeare. 1922; No. 1.) It has now been superseded by Richard Roe's The New Shakespeare Bibliography. 1995. (No. 2.)


2nd part
1 Doe, John: Shakespeare. 32nd enlarged and revised edition. Oxford: Oxford Press 1922. 923 pages
2 Roe, Richard: The New Shakespeare Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford Press 1995. 15 vols.
Jon
Site Admin
Posts: 10048
Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:27 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD
Contact:

Re: How to number inline custom citations?

Post by Jon »

I don't think this is possible. The citation has no link to the entry in the bibliography. That is, it doesn't know where the reference appears in the bibliography.

I played with the format a bit, and the only thing I can point out, which I doubt is helpful, is that if you use % in a custom citation Bookends will output the relative position of that reference in the database. So if you cite the 6th reference, it would output 6. Note that 6 applies to the actual order in which the reference occurs in the database, *not* where you see it in the sorted library window. You can see the actual order by turning of sorting for the reference list in preferences. Now you'll see what is 6th in the order.

So, it might be possible by creating a new library and importing references (by drag and drop, probably) in the order you want them in the final bibliography to make what you want happen. But it's a lot of work, and probably no better than simply editing the numbers yourself in the scanned manuscript to make them match the bibliography.

Jon
Sonny Software
Philologist
Posts: 166
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:17 am

Re: How to number inline custom citations?

Post by Philologist »

Thank you, Jon.
I should like to add that this system is actually quite common in annotated bibliographies. Here is a randomly selected book that uses it throughout (numbering starts here on page 6.)
https://books.google.de/books?id=mVi3DQ ... &q&f=false

I think I may have found a method which makes this possible, albeit with some limitation:

(1) Use custom citations
(2) Scan document with "Retain hidden citations" off
3.png
3.png (57.8 KiB) Viewed 1927 times
(3) Add the custom citations again to the document as numbers
(4) Scan the document with "Retain hidden citations" enabled
Philologist
Posts: 166
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:17 am

Re: How to number inline custom citations?

Post by Philologist »

"Citation Options" in the Formats Manager has the option of using a number as unique citation. The number can be preceded with text, but not followed by anything else,

2.png
2.png (37.89 KiB) Viewed 1925 times
thus making it different from and inferior to numbered references which can be both preceded and followed by text.

1.png
1.png (10.68 KiB) Viewed 1925 times

Could this be changed and enhanced so it can be punctuated like Number references?
Jon
Site Admin
Posts: 10048
Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:27 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD
Contact:

Re: How to number inline custom citations?

Post by Jon »

Unlike in a bibliography, for a citation it's petty easy to follow the number with anything you want, entered in the body of the text.

Jon
Sonny Software
Post Reply