formatting question with empty authors field

[Reiner]

hi there,

i have a document which has no named author but only editors. this is a seldom exception which makes a problem with the formatting in the bibliography which is:

Code: Select all

a: t. l: u d.

now with the empty authors field no author and no editor is displayed. am i missing an option to display the editors instead of the authors if this field is empty?

or does this option not exist? (if it doesn't exist, please take this as feature request, jon. thanks.)


another strange behaviour in the same case with empty authors field with the formatting

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e $(Hg.)$: t. l: u d.

and the setting to use " u. a." (german version of "et al.) if more than 3 auth/eds exist. this results in

Editor et al. 2002

within the text, but in

Editor u. a. (Hg.): ...

in the bibliography.

am i missing something here, or is this a bug?



(i'm using 9.0.7 beta 1)[/code]

[Jon]

First, Bookends won't substitute the editors for the authors (if authors is empty). You need to use

e

in the order field to output the editors. That is why the Edited Book Types use the e instead of the a.

Second, you don't give enough information about the citation. Is this a custom citation. Or an Author-Date citation? If the latter, you can't control how "and others" is indicated (it is always et al.).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Reiner]

First, Bookends won't substitute the editors for the authors (if authors is empty). You need to use

e

in the order field to output the editors. That is why the Edited Book Types use the e instead of the a.

yes, I know this. but this is an exception. it is an article published as pdf in the internet. this type of publication normally has a given author, but in this case it only has shown editors though it is definitely an article. I don't want to create a new reference type for this only case.

I want to make a format which displays the author and if this field is empty the editor.

I'm not sure but fear that this is not possible with Bookends at the moment. If this is correct, I would like to suggest this feature for a further version: it would be nice to introduce a special character which can make this "if field x is empty, use field y"-rules.

Another special character with a similar us would be useful to manage "use field x but use field y instead if y has content".

Second, you don't give enough information about the citation. Is this a custom citation. Or an Author-Date citation? If the latter, you can't control how "and others" is indicated (it is always et al.).

sorry. it is an editor-date citation. I don't understand: why do you say I can't control the appearance of "and others"? I can in the "Bib & Citation Options"-Tab of the Formats-dialog-window. The problem is, that this seams to have no influence on the editor-date citation.

maybe my mind is blockaded but why should it make sense that user can change the appearance of "and others" within bibliographies at the end but not for inline-citations?

[Jon]

maybe my mind is blockaded but why should it make sense that user can change the appearance of "and others" within bibliographies at the end but not for inline-citations?

The bibliography generator has nothing to do with creating author-date citations. The former is extremely flexible, the latter is not (you can see what options it provides in the format definition window, second tab).

You can use the bibliography generator to create citations for you, of course. These are called custom citations, and are created by assigning a custom citation format to your scanning format. Details can be found in the User Guide.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Reiner]

Thank you very much. I knew Bookends can handle my problem, it was just my blindness

[Jon]

BTW, with regard to your first question, if you know that the reference will contain either and author or an editor, but never both, I think you can use

ae

in the format. The one that is present will be output. The one that is empty will be ignored.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Reiner]

thanks.