[Tex/LaTex] Sorting with biblatex using sortname

biblatexsorting

I want to use the firstinits=true option of biblatex, and to disable the abbreviations for specific entries, I use {{authorname}}, as recommended in a previous question. However, biblatex is apparently unable to sort the bibliography in this case. No matter, I thought, I can just provide sortname for the few entries where this is necessary. But biblatex seems to ignore this, i.e. Baltasar appears first in my example.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic,firstinits=true]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
    @report{example1,
        author={Buthor, Baltasar},
        title={Baltie's report}
    }

    @report{example2,
        sortname={Author, Archibald},
        title={Archie's report},
        author={{Archibald Author}}
    }
\end{filecontents}
\bibliography{references.bib}

\begin{document}
  \nocite{*}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

How do I use the sortname field properly?

Edit: I’m using an up-to-date TeXLive 2011, compiling with pdflatex and bibtex. Tried under both XP and Ubuntu.

Best Answer

Adding sorting=nyt to the biblatex options will fix it:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[
    style=alphabetic,
    sorting=nyt,
    firstinits=true
]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
  @report{example1,
    author={{Archibald Author}},
    title={Archies first report}
    }
  @report{example2,
    author={{Archibald Author}},
    sortname={Author, Archibald},
    title={Archies second report}
    } 
  @report{example3,
    author={Archibald Author},
    sortname={Author, Archibald},
    title={Archies third report}
    }
  @report{example4,
    author={Buthor, Baltasar},
    title={Balties report}
    }
  @report{example5,
    author={Cuthor, Charlie},
    title={Charlies report}
    }   
\end{filecontents}
\bibliography{references.bib}

\begin{document}
  % lorem~\cite{example2}
  \nocite{*}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

See section 3.3.2 and section 3.1.2.1 of the biblatex documentation:
alphabetic: This style will set the following package options at load time: labelalpha=true, sorting=anyt.

anyt will sort by label, then name, then year, then title, which should be ok, as the label is also in alphabetic order, but for some reason (maybe a bug?) it does not work as expected.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Sorting and citing names with ‘von’ prefix using biblatex

I'm not a regexp person, really, so I suspect many people could improve on this. But there are two different approaches: a more 'manual' one, which is easier (for me) to fine-tune the final sorting scheme; and a fancier one that may cause havoc if you have many van and von entries with names otherwise identical to other people. (The worst case scenario would be to have a Ludwig Beethoven, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Ludwig von Beethoven --- not sure if it would ever get that bad, but there you have it.) So:

Manual fine-tuning:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber,useprefix=true,style=authortitle]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}

@article{aaa,
  author =    {Adams, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Adams},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{ccc,
  author =    {Curtius, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Curtius},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{sss,
  author =    {Smith, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Smith},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{www,
  author =    {Williams, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Williams},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{van,
  author =    {van Beethoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Beethoven},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{von,
  author =    {von Beethoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Another Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Beethoven},
  date =      1999,
}

@article{nosort,
  author =    {van~Beethoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Another Title},
  journal =   {Don't Sort this One via DeclareSourceMap, thanks to the Tilde},
  date =      2001
}

@article{override,
  author =    {van Beethoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sortname is: ZZZ -- Will be Overwritten!},
  date =      2000,
  sortname =  {ZZZ},
}


@article{beethoven,
  author =    {Beethoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under Beethoven but
               before the von/van entries (to pinpoint final sort)},
  date =      1998,
}

@article{beZthoven,
  author =    {Bezthoven, Ludwig},
  title =     {Title},
  journal =   {Sort this one under BeZthoven (to pinpoint final sort)},
  date =      1998,
}

\end{filecontents*}

\DeclareSourcemap{%
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map[overwrite=true]{
      \perdatasource{\jobname.bib}
      \step[fieldsource=author, final]
      \step[fieldset=sortname, origfieldval]
      \step[fieldsource=sortname,
            match=\regexp{van\s(Beethoven,)\s(Ludwig)*},
            replace={BeethovenY, Ludwig}]
      \step[fieldsource=sortname,
            match=\regexp{von\s(Beethoven,)\s(Ludwig)*},
            replace={BeethovenZ, Ludwig}]
    }% The disadvantage is clear: you need to add manual sorting
  }%   rules for each individual.  But the advantage is that it is
}%     easier to control the final sorting scheme


\begin{document}

\nocite{*}
\printbibliography

\end{document}

Trying to be clever with REGEXP:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber,useprefix=true,style=authortitle]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
% well, just use the same entries as above
\end{filecontents}

\DeclareSourcemap{% 
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map[overwrite=true]{
      \perdatasource{\jobname.bib}
      \step[fieldsource=author, final]
      \step[fieldset=sortname, origfieldval]
      \step[fieldsource=sortname,
            match=\regexp{(v.n)\s(\w+,)\s(\w+)*},
            replace={$2}]
    }% the problem: 'von' will be sorted before 'van' IFF the title
  }%   of the 'von' entry is alphabetically prior to the title of
}%     the 'van' entry. Worse(?): a regular 'Beethoven, Ludwig' will
%      also be sorted among the 'van's and 'von's based solely on their 
%      titles.


\begin{document}

\nocite{*}
\printbibliography

\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex messing up citation entry with lots of authors

This problem is due to biblatex-apa's (apa.bbx's) apaauthor name format; you might want to notify the author of this small bug.

The string and others in the author list sets ifmorenames to true. apaauthor checks for this case whenever a name is printed, not just at the very end of the list; consequently it prints the andothers string ("et al.") after each name.

The fix is to add the following lines to your preamble.

\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
    {\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
    {\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
      {}
      {\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
        {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
        {\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}% this test is new
    {\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}

The MWE

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{boker2011,
Author = {Boker, S. and Neale, M. and Maes, H. and Wilde, M. and
Spiegel, M. and Brick, T. and Spies, J. and Estabrook,
R. and Kenny, S. and Bates, T. and others},
Title = {Open{M}x: {A}n open source extended structural
equation modeling framework},
Journal = {Psychometrika},
Volume = {76},
Number = {2},
Pages = {306--317},
year = 2011
}


\documentclass{apa6}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,maxnames=999,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,apabackref=true,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
    {\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
    {\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
      {}
      {\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
        {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
        {\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}
    {\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}

\shorttitle{IFA}

\begin{document}

OpenMx \parencite{boker2011,aksin,wilde,murray}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

then yields

enter image description here

Update 2013-10: This has been corrected in biblatex-apa version 6.4 according to a comment below the question from user PLK.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Sorting and citing names with ‘von’ prefix using biblatex

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex messing up citation entry with lots of authors

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