Sonny Software

Hi,
I need to handle in a citation format, for a Ref type 'book', different cases, which I cannot figure out how to do it. I copy this here in case anyone can give me some hint.

A book can have just one volume or different volumes. In this second case, some books have a title for the volume and others don't. This citation format requires that, when there is a volume number (and title) it should be added at the end, followed by cited pages, like this:

J. Sawyer, Dreaming with the Angels (Atlanta 2013) II, 134.

or

S. Smith, Beware of Dogs (New York 2012) I: Small Dogs, 23.

or (when it is only one volume, without comma)

M. Kirk, Travelling abroad (Miami 2011) 11.

In my custom format I have something like this:

a, t$ (l d`)`$ $u14$: $v, (where u14 is volume number and 'v' is volume name)

My problem is how to handle the comma: If it is attached to 'v', it will not show up when there is no volume name. If it is 'forced' with `,`, it will show up when there is no volume number too...

Any suggestion?

There are lots of possible answers to this, but think the simplest is -- rely on Cited Pages to handle this. Don't put the final comma in the format Order. Put it in the "Before" Cited Pages field (Citation Options, Common Settings). And a period in the "After" Cited Pages field. Then, in the document, you cite like this:

{temp cite@14}

and you get

final citation, 14.

If you want the leading comma and space suppressed (because you have only one volume), use this construction

{temp cite@\\14}

(this tells Bookends to put whatever is between the backslashes in front of the Cited Pages, ignoring what's in the format.)

You can reverse these if you like (have nothing in the Before field in the format, and using @\, \ when needed to tell Bookends to output the comma and space).

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks, Jon. This is already a sort of solution. In any case, I have to handle this manually, so to say (second solution being preferable in my case, since most of books have only one volume). I hoped there was a way in which BE can handle this cases automatically. Ok. I can live with that.
Best wishes.

I prefer the solution I offered. However, don't forget conditional grouping in formats, it's quite powerful.

{a, t^t}

will output "author, title" if both fields have info, and just "title" if there is no author. You can have as many conditional statements in a grouping as you like. This is just an example.

Jon
Sonny Software