[Tex/LaTex] Umlaut in alphabetic citation keys in biblatex

biblatexbibtex

My citation organisation tool of choice (so far) exports umlauts like ö as \"{o}. When these occur in the beginning of the first author's name of a bib entry, the citation shorthand is generated from the letters before the umlaut and with the dots above the first number of the year.

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic,backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{lib.bib}
@book{Goethe1773,
    author = {von G\"{o}the, JW},
    title = {Götz von Berlichingen},
    year = {1773}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{lib.bib}

\begin{document}

In~\cite{Goethe1773}...

\printbibliography
\end{document}

When I change the \"{o} manually to {\"o}, the shorthand is consistent with the others (Göt73), when I change it to ö itself, it becomes Gö73 (without t).

Can I get Göt73 without manually editing each umlaut-containing bib entry each time I export my library? (With biber as backend this is what I get in all three cases, however, there are other problems with my library.)

Best Answer

First of all, the specific example can be better solved using the correct spelling for the name, which is Goethe, but I'll assume that this choice was deliberate in order not to mention any specific real case.

The correct syntax with BibTeX is

G{\"{o}}the

enter image description here

There's nothing you can do about it, except fixing the entries.

On the other hand, if you use Biber, you can type either

G\"othe

or

Göthe

Here's an example:

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{Goethe1773,
    author = {von G{\"{o}}the, JW},
    title = {Götz von Berlichingen},
    year = {1773}
}
@book{Goethe1773x,
    author = {von G\"othe, JW},
    title = {Götz von Berlichingen},
    year = {1773}
}
@book{Goethe1773y,
    author = {von Göthe, JW},
    title = {Götz von Berlichingen},
    year = {1773}
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic,backend=biber]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

In~\cite{Goethe1773}, in \cite{Goethe1773x}
and in \cite{Goethe1773y}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

If you examine the .bbl file, you'll find a difference between the three items: in the first the author turns out to be G{ö}the, which may be relevant as far as collation is concerned, but a rough test seems to reveal it isn't.

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