Colour citation brackets

biberbiblatexbiblatex-extcitingcolor

I am writing my thesis,
and my university provides a neat template that I am currently using.
Among the customised options the template has,
there is also a specific color that is used for titles, caption and so on.
At some point during the drafting I thought it would be nice
to be able to also see the citations in said color instead of a dull black,
so I started messing around with the hyperref package:

\definecolor{bluepoli}{cmyk}{0.4,0.1,0,0.4} % University colour definition for context
\usepackage[colorlinks=true, linkcolor=black, anchorcolor=black, citecolor=bluepoli,%
            filecolor=black, menucolor=black, runcolor=black, urlcolor=black]{hyperref}

The result though did not satisfy me, it actually looked worse,
because with this only the numbers inside the square brackets are coloured
(I am using biber with a numeric-comp style).

I took a look at the biblatex package then to see
whether it offered any colouring options, but I remained dissatisfied.
I could just drop this whim,
but I couldn't wrap my head around the fact even books and papers
that use coloured links have the same, to my eyes, problem.
I thought about changing the text colour before and after invoking \cite{}
using \renewcommand{}{},
but I am not very experienced with the mechanisms underneath LaTeX.
After a quick search I found this answer:
renewcommand cite with one or two arguments,
and now my code looks like this:

\newcommand{\blup}[1]{\textcolor{bluepoli}{#1}} % Quick colour-setting command

\makeatletter
\let\@citexOld\@citex
\def\@citex[#1]#2{\blup{\@citexOld[#1]{#2}}}
\makeatother

\let\citeOld\cite % renew cite
\renewcommand{\cite}[1]{{\blup{\citeOld{#1}}}}
\let\citetOld\citet % renew cite
\renewcommand{\citet}[1]{{\blup{\citetOld{#1}}}}

Which works, but it feels clumsy to do so for every citing command I might need.
I also did not realise that
what I defined changes also the colour of explicit authors citations.

Is there a less clunky way to have only square brackets
and citations coloured? Is this actually heresy from a typographic standpoint?

Notes: yes I am aware that \citet{} is a command from natbib,
which only uses bibtex.
Originally the template used this package, but after increasing frustrations
I switched to biber

Edit(1): I provide here a minimal reproducible example
of the source code.

\documentclass[12pt, twoside]{book} 

\usepackage{color}
\usepackage[autostyle,italian=guillemets]{csquotes}
\usepackage[natbib=true,style=numeric-comp,sorting=none,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,citecolor=bluepoli]{hyperref}

\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@article{knuth74,
    author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
    title = {Computer Programming As an Art},
    journal = {Commun. ACM},
    year = {1974},
    pages = {667--673},
}
@book{peterson93,
  author    = {Peter Peterson},
  title     = {The title of the work},
  publisher = {The name of the publisher},
  year      = {1993},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{test.bib}

\definecolor{bluepoli}{cmyk}{0.4,0.1,0,0.4} % Define colour of citations and
\newcommand{\blup}[1]{\textcolor{bluepoli}{#1}} % its shortcut

\makeatletter % Redefine the macro of citex
\let\@citexOld\@citex
\def\@citex[#1]#2{\blup{\@citexOld[#1]{#2}}}
\makeatother
\let\citeOld\cite % Renew cite
\renewcommand{\cite}[1]{{\blup{\citeOld{#1}}}}
\let\citetOld\citet % Renew citet
\renewcommand{\citet}[1]{{\blup{\citetOld{#1}}}}

\begin{document}

\section*{Section}
This is a test~\cite{knuth74}.\\
\citet{peterson93} also reports a test.
\printbibliography

\end{document}

Edit(2): Thanks to @Accácio
for giving insight into the documentation
to refer to for the solution.
I decided to tidy up a bit this question.
The package extension biblatex-ext has a function
that is specifically designed to change the style
of the delimiters (in this case, their color).
It is necessary to change the style of citation in the
options of the biblatex first:

\usepackage[style=ext-numeric-comp,sorting=none,backend=biber]{biblatex} 
% the style is changed to 'ext-numeric-comp'
\DeclareOuterCiteDelims{cite} % for the cite command
    {\textcolor{bluepoli}{\bibopenbracket}}  % left bracket
    {\textcolor{bluepoli}{\bibclosebracket}} % right bracket

At the moment I did not find a way
to change the brackets of ALL cite commands,
partly because the result I seek concerns in some cases
the outer delimiter, in others the inner delimiter,
like the author citation

\DeclareInnerCiteDelims{textcite} % for the textcite command
    {\textcolor{bluepoli}{\bibopenbracket}} % left INNER bracket
    {\textcolor{bluepoli}{\bibclosebracket}} % right INNER bracket

Which in the previous code produces the correct result.

Instead, the modification of the external delimiters concerns
the wrapping of the entire citation, author included.

Best Answer

We can use a solution similar to https://stackoverflow.com/a/69727169/9781176 by using biblatex-ext and the \DeclareOuterCiteDelims function:

\documentclass[12pt, twoside]{book}

\usepackage{color}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,citecolor=bluepoli]{hyperref}
\usepackage[autostyle,italian=guillemets]{csquotes}
\usepackage[natbib=true,style=ext-numeric-comp,sorting=none,backend=biber]{biblatex}

\DeclareOuterCiteDelims{cite}{\textcolor{green}{\bibopenbracket}}{\textcolor{red}{\bibclosebracket}}
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@article{knuth74,
    author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
    title = {Computer Programming As an Art},
    journal = {Commun. ACM},
    year = {1974},
    pages = {667--673},
}
@book{peterson93,
  author    = {Peter Peterson},
  title     = {The title of the work},
  publisher = {The name of the publisher},
  year      = {1993},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{test.bib}

\definecolor{bluepoli}{cmyk}{0.4,0.1,0,0.4} % Define colour of citations and
\newcommand{\blup}[1]{\textcolor{bluepoli}{#1}} % its shortcut
\makeatletter % Redefine the macro of citex

\begin{document}

\section*{Section}
This is a test~\cite{knuth74}.\\
\citep{peterson93} also reports a test.
\printbibliography

\end{document}

resulting in

N.B: The citation style is changed to ext-numeric-comp

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Biblatex / Biber full citation for first occurrence only

Using a modified tufte-common.def file you can create tufte-latex documents with biblatex. A limitation is that tufte-latex modifies footnotes. So biblatex features such as \smartcite inside footnotes and footnote detection with \iffootnote may not work as intended. Most of this has already been covered in another post.

As for the citation style, you can get most of the way there with some edits to the textcite bibliography macro and \smartcite. Both of these are defined in numeric.cbx.

\documentclass[nobib]{tufte-handout}
\usepackage{hyphenat}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=numeric,citetracker=true,autocite=footnote]{biblatex}

\makeatletter

% If not seen, avoid compact lists and print full citation
\renewbibmacro*{textcite}{%
  \ifciteseen
    {}
    {\clearfield{namehash}}%
  \iffieldequals{namehash}{\cbx@lasthash}
    {\multicitedelim}
    {\cbx@tempa
     \ifciteseen
       {\ifnameundef{labelname}
          {\printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}
          {\printnames{labelname}}}
       {\usedriver
          {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}%
           \clearfield{pages}%
           \clearfield{pagetotal}}
          {\thefield{entrytype}}}%
     \addspace\bibopenbracket}%
  \ifnumequal{\value{citecount}}{1}
    {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
    {}%
  \usebibmacro{cite}%
  \savefield{namehash}{\cbx@lasthash}%
  \gdef\cbx@tempa{\bibclosebracket\multicitedelim}}

% Make \smartcite like \textcite
\DeclareCiteCommand{\smartcite}[\iffootnote\mkbibbrackets\mkbibfootnote]
  {\let\cbx@tempa=\empty
   \undef\cbx@lasthash}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{textcite}}
  {}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}%
   \bibclosebracket}

\makeatother

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
One of the most prominent and distinctive features of this style is the
extensive use of sidenotes \autocites(See)()[10--15]{knuth:ct:a}[10]{companion}.
There is a wide margin to provide ample room for sidenotes and small figures
\autocite{knuth:ct:a,knuth:ct:b}. Any footnotes will automatically be converted to
sidenotes.\footnote{Results from \textcite{knuth:ct:a,knuth:ct:b,companion} showed
that...}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

Some notes:

The autocite=footnote option setting makes \autocite use \smartcite as its backend citation command.
The \ifciteseen test needs citation tracking enabled. In the example global tracking is enabled via citetracker=true. Alternative settings are possible. Refer to the manual for details.
Full citations are printed with \usedriver. The first argument to this command allows you to hook code in before printing. This is a good place to suppress fields with \clearfield and friends. In the example, I suppress the pages and pagetotal fields to avoid confusion with page references in postnotes.
In numeric, \textcite generates compact citation lists. This complicates printing full citations. The edits to textcite take an easy way out by simply replacing the labelname or labeltitle with the full citation.
The numeric style isn't particularly suited to this customization. Refer to the verbose style or any of its variants for some better alternatives.

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

First thing to do is to add a field for the journal abbreviation to the article entrytype, journalabbr in the MWE. Therefore you need to declare a datamodel (an extra file; in the MWE I've used filecontents to simulate that) and you have to tell biblatex/biber to use it in the package options.

Then you have to modify the cite command, so it fits your needs. \citep from the authoryear-style (your citestyle) uses the \cite command. There you just have to add a switch, which checks if the field journalabbr is empty or not, and prints it out or not.

Last but not least you have to add the abbreviation fields to the entries.

MWE:

\begin{filecontents}{min.bib}
@article{boisson2003unexpected,
  title={Unexpected protein families including cell defense components feature in the N-myristoylome of a higher eukaryote},
  author={Boisson, B. and Giglione, Carmela and Meinnel, Thierry},
  journal={Journal of Biological Chemistry},
  journalabbr={JBC},
  year={2003},
  publisher={ASBMB}
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\ProvidesFile{authorjabbryear.dbx}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field,datatype=literal]{journalabbr}
\DeclareDatamodelEntryfields[article]{journalabbr}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[fontsize=11pt, paper=a4, ngerman, DIV=calc]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[german=quotes]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,isbn=false,natbib=true, citestyle=authoryear,bibstyle=authoryear,backend=biber,maxnames=1,maxcitenames=1,
,datamodel=authorjabbryear%added!
] {biblatex}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{ngerman}{ andothers = {{et\,al\adddot}} }

\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%from authoryear.cbx
  \iffieldundef{shorthand}
    {\ifthenelse{\ifnameundef{labelname}\OR\iffieldundef{labelyear}}
       {\usebibmacro{cite:label}%
        \setunit{\addspace}}
       {\printnames{labelname}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}}%
     \iffieldundef{journalabbr}{}{%
        \printfield{journalabbr}%
        \setunit{\nameyeardelim}%
        }%
     \usebibmacro{cite:labelyear+extrayear}}
    {\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}

\addbibresource{min.bib}

\begin{document}

\citep{boisson2003unexpected} 

How it should look like: 

(Boisson et al., JBC, 2003)

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Biblatex / Biber full citation for first occurrence only

[Tex/LaTex] Citing (author, journalabbr., year) needed

Related Question