apa-stylebiblatex
I am currently porting a large document to use biblatex-apa. Everything is finally getting into place, but I've now realized that to get correct APA citations I should use \parencite instead of \cite.
I really don't want to replace the citations throughout the entire document, especially when every other day they will change the reference manager backend.
Is there an easy way to simply reinterpret \cite with \parencite everywhere in the document?
As pointed out by Bernard in the comments, the problem might be caused by the editor. This was indeed the case.
I'm using TeXnicCenter 2, which has a list of output profiles for different compilers and post-processors. By default, all of these output profiles invoke bibtex, and without any content being written to bibtex (seeing as I'm using biblatex instead), bibtex writes an empty file to the .bbl file every time the document is compiled, thus overwriting whatever biber has written before.
Disabling BibTeX from the output profiles solves this entire problem. To find the window where output profiles can be changed, either press Alt+F7 or click the menu Build -> Define Output Profiles....
TeXnicCenter 1 is likely to have the same issue.
This needs a bit of code, but the actual changes to the original defintions from .cbx are not that big.
First we need to define a macro to print the ibidem, cite:ibid (copied from authoryear-ibid.cbx). We also request the ibidem tracker with ibidtracker=constrict and page tracking (to avoid a "ibid." at the beginning of a page) with pagetracker.
Then it is just a matter of inserting the conditional \ifthenelse{\ifciteibid\AND\NOT\iffirstonpage} in the right place in the cite and textcite macros and adding a call to cite:ibid.
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa, pagetracker, ibidtracker=constrict]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\makeatletter
\providecommand*{\mkibid}[1]{#1}
\newbibmacro*{cite:ibid}{%
\printtext[bibhyperref]{\bibstring[\mkibid]{ibidem}}}
\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%
\ifthenelse{\ifciteibid\AND\NOT\iffirstonpage}
{\usebibmacro{cite:ibid}}
{\iffieldequals{fullhash}{\cbx@lasthash}
% Multiple cites in one command
{\setunit{\compcitedelim}%
\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}}%
% Single cite
{\ifthenelse{\ifnameundef{labelname}\OR\iffieldequalstr{entrytype}{patent}}
% No author/editor
{\usebibmacro{cite:noname}%
\setunit{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}%
\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}%
\savefield{fullhash}{\cbx@lasthash}}
% Normal cite
{\ifnameundef{shortauthor}
{\printnames[labelname][-\value{listtotal}]{labelname}}%
{\cbx@apa@ifnamesaved
{\printnames{shortauthor}}
{\printnames[labelname][-\value{listtotal}]{author}%
\addspace\printnames[sabrackets]{shortauthor}}}%
\setunit{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}%
\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}%
\savefield{fullhash}{\cbx@lasthash}}}}%
\setunit{\multicitedelim}}
\renewbibmacro*{textcite}{%
\iffieldequals{fullhash}{\cbx@lasthash}
% Compact cite - more than one thing for same author
{\setunit{\compcitedelim}%
\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}}
% New cite
{%
\ifbool{cbx:parens}
{\bibcloseparen\global\boolfalse{cbx:parens}}
{}%
\setunit{\compcitedelim}%
\ifthenelse{\ifnameundef{labelname}\OR\iffieldequalstr{entrytype}{patent}}
% No author/editor or patent
{\iffieldundef{shorthand}%
% Cite using title
{\usebibmacro{cite:noname}%
\setunit{\ifbool{cbx:np}%
{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}%
{\global\booltrue{cbx:parens}\addspace\bibopenparen}}%
\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}}
% Cite using shorthand
{\usebibmacro{cite:shorthand}}}
% Normal cite with author/editor
% Normal full cite
{\ifnameundef{shortauthor}%
% Normal full cite
{\printnames[labelname][-\value{listtotal}]{labelname}}
% Cite using short author
{\cbx@apa@ifnamesaved
{\printnames{shortauthor}}
{\printnames[labelname][-\value{listtotal}]{author}}}%
% Year
\setunit{\ifbool{cbx:np}
{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}
{\global\booltrue{cbx:parens}\addspace\bibopenparen}}%
% Put the shortauthor inside the year brackets if necessary
\ifnameundef{shortauthor}
{}
{\cbx@apa@ifnamesaved
{}
{\printnames{shortauthor}\setunit{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}}}%
% Actual year printing
\ifthenelse{\ifciteibid\AND\NOT\iffirstonpage}
{\usebibmacro{cite:ibid}}
{\usebibmacro{cite:plabelyear+extradate}}%
% Save name hash for checks later
\savefield{fullhash}{\cbx@lasthash}}}}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
First citation should be normal \parencite{sigfridsson}, second time with ibidem
\parencite{sigfridsson}, but after a second citation \parencite{geer} it should
appear as usual \parencite{sigfridsson}.
\cite{nussbaum}
First citation should be normal \textcite{sigfridsson}, second time with ibidem
\textcite{sigfridsson}, but after a second citation \textcite{geer} it should
appear as usual \textcite{sigfridsson}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}
Best Answer
You could
but I'm not too fond of that, in fact I cringe every time I have to see this. Normally
\letting around commands willy-nilly might have (unforeseeable, bad) consequences, but it is quite unlikely that you break things if you usebiblatex.With
biblatexthere is the high-level command\autocitethat you can use. Then you can easily configurebiblatexto use normal\cite, brackets with\parenciteor footnotes with\footcitefor\autocite. (Mildly related: Universal\citecommands or defining new cite commands)In most modern editors it will take 30 seconds tops to do a 'search and replace' for
\citevs.\parencite. That can of course easily be undone by the opposite replacement.