Alphabetizing by 1st Author then date

[stevicus]

Seems like this should be simple, and I've never had this problem before. In references manager, Alphabetize references is selected, with 1st Author, Date, Other Authors. However, in my list of references produced when scanning the document from Mellel, I end up with this sort of order (for simplicity, I'm omitting the additional authors that are actually listed):
Doe et al., 1997
Doe et al., 1999
Doe et al., 1993
Doe et al., 1992
Doe et al., 2001

What other setting controls this in 11.3.5?
Also, is there a known way to have the URLs inserted into mellel as hyperlinks as opposed to plain text?

[Jon]

Sorts are alphanumeric, so be sure the date field has just the year, no month or other modifiers.

As for the URLs Bookends sends text. You could try editing the format so that the HTML around the URL is sent (<a ref ...), but I suspect Mellel will interpret that as text as well. Perhaps Mellel has the capability of changing HTML URL links to real links, I don't know. See the Bookends User Guide section on Bookends Server for how to wrap URLs in HTML link tags).

Jon
Sonny Software

[stevicus]

Thanks for the reply, Jon. I've confirmed that there are only years in the date, so I'm not sure what's doing on here.

Thanks for the suggestion on URLs. I thought about sending the html markup, but figured the same thing would happen. I'll see if mellel has a way to handle it - I'm thinking probably not.

[Jon]

Can you try the sorting issue with the Bookends 12 demo (you'll be limited to 50 references)?

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. You should at least upgrade to 11.3.7, which is free if you bought Bookends 11.x. It's on our downloads page.

[stevicus]

Yeah, I can see what I can do. About to submit this MS (which is why I'm futzing with the references), which means I'll be free to upgrade to the next version of 11. (self imposed rule to never upgrade along the final stretch, before submission )

[Jon]

Did it work properly with 12? And as for upgrading to 11.3.7, that's a minor step -- and you can keep 11.3.5 around (zipped, so it won't be launched by mistake) in case you want to go back to it. Downloading and trying 11.3.7 is not an irreversible step.

Jon
Sonny Software

[stevicus]

Hi Jon, sorry for the late reply - had a conference and a lot of non-desk work. I updated to 11.3.7 and still see the same ordering issue. Once I update to 12, I'll try that. If you are interested, I can send you a copy of my reference format and library.

[Jon]

Sure, please zip and send the format you are using, the library, and a document I can scan with them, to support@sonnysoftware.com

Jon
Sonny Software

[stevicus]

OK, done!

[Jon]

For anyone following this who might run into the same issue, the problem was that the first author's name wasn't spelled identically in each reference. Some had a space between the initials and some did not. Spaces and punctuation are all taken into account when sorting.

"Bartleby, RR" is not the same as "Bartleby, R R"

When the names were made the same, the sorted bibliography was output as expected.

Jon
Sonny Software