Sonny Software

Hi,

this weekend, I've started to create my own format, because there isn't any, which matches the format I want to use.
Thanks to the tutorial it worked out quite fine, for now I have only one problem with the format for books. This problem occurs only in the special case, if a book has a serial title, but no volume. My format is looking like this:

a, t ~(~j v~)~`,` ~übers. v. ~u3*, l d`.`
(u3= translator)

If there is no volume (about 23 cases out of 100 at the moment), the last bracket won't appear:

Althoff, Gerd, Otto III. (Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Darmstadt 1996.
It should look like this:
Althoff, Gerd, Otto III. (Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance), Darmstadt 1996.

For the time being, I entered a rhomb (#) in the volume field an delete it manually afterwards:

Althoff, Gerd, Otto III. (Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance #), Darmstadt 1996.

Is there any other way?

Thank you!
Katharina

Hallo Katharina,

you need to use conditional groups to achieve this:

a, t{ (j v),^ (j),^,} ~übers. v. ~u3*, l d`.`

The contents of { } will be processed like this:

if all fields that are requested before the first ^ are defined in your reference, than this segment is used

if not, the segment up to the next ^ will be processed in the same way, until a segment works or the end of the { } is reached.

(I hope this works as I think it does, if not, just post again!)

By the way, if this an often used & requested format you can submit it to Jon after you’re finished with it. Then he can include it in the next Bookends update to the delight of other German historians who work with Bookends.