[Tex/LaTex] Automatically validate and format ISBNs

automationbiblatexscripts

Is there any way to get Biblatex to automatically validate and format ISBNs? That is, I would like to be able to enter a field such as

isbn = {9789549090666},

in my .bib file—not worrying about the presence or proper placement of hyphens—and have Biblatex render this as "ISBN 978-954-90906-6-6" when I print the bibliography with \printbibliography. It would also be useful if Biblatex could first validate the ISBN and, if it's an older ISBN-10, convert it to ISBN-13.

If there's no easy way of doing this in Biblatex, is there perhaps an external program I can run on my .bib file to do the validation and formatting? All I've found so far are online tools, and some of them improperly group the digits of the ISBN. (For those that aren't aware, while ISBNs have a fixed number of digits, the lengths of the hyphen-separated groups are variable.)

Best Answer

Please try biber 2.2 (along with biblatex 3.1). The --validate-datamodel option will report on invalid ISBNs. The new options --isbn10 will force ISBNs to 10-digit format and --isbn13 to 13-digit. --isbn-normalise will format with hyphens in the correct places.

The module which does this in Biber has a database of ISBN numbers which is updated with new releases of the module.

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[Tex/LaTex] Automatically formatting punctuation using biblatex field format

Re-reading the manual, I find what I'm after is the punctfont option:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric,punctfont]{biblatex}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{volume}{\mkbibbold{#1}}
\renewbibmacro*{volume+number+eid}{%
  \printfield{volume}%
  \setunit*{\addcomma}%
  \printfield{number}%
  \setunit{\addcomma\space}%
  \printfield{eid}}
\bibliography{biblatex-examples}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] Can LaTeX automatically itemize a list

I propose a solution using the csvsimple package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{csvsimple}

\begin{filecontents}{list.csv}
religion
religious
rely
remain
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\csvloop{
    file = {list.csv},
    no head,
    before reading = {\begin{enumerate}},
    after reading = {\end{enumerate}},
    before line = \item
}

\end{document}

Edit

In order to draw a line after the elements, use a \rule:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{csvsimple}

\begin{filecontents}{list.csv}
religion
religious
rely
remain
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\csvloop{
    file = {list.csv},
    no head,
    before reading = {\begin{enumerate}},
    after reading = {\end{enumerate}},
    before line = \item,
    after line = \rule{1cm}{.4pt}
}

\end{document}

As LaTeX does not store the individual items of an enumerate, it's tricky to shuffle the items. There are some heavy solutions to this problem, but I wouldn't recommend any of them when handling large datasets ("thousands of lines potentially"). Just quickly set up a Python script to shuffle your list around before compiling your document.

import random

with open('data.csv', 'r') as input_file:
    data = input_file.readlines()

random.shuffle(data)

with open('output_file.csv', 'w') as output_file:
    for item in data:
        output_file.writelines(item)

You could even have a look at the pythontex package which enables you to add executable Python code to your LaTeX file. Upon document generation, the code will be executed and the results are added to the LaTeX file. I could imagine, that this would allow you to implement the shuffling to the document generation.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Automatically formatting punctuation using biblatex field format

[Tex/LaTex] Can LaTeX automatically itemize a list

Edit

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