Re: oc-biblatex and biblatex substyles

[Thomas S. Dye]

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Another possibility it to write, e.g., "oc-biblatex-chicago.el" 
> and
> define a new ‘biblatex-chicago’ export processor, re-using most
> functions from "oc-biblatex.el". It would probably only be 
> necessary to
> re-define ‘org-cite-biblatex-export-citation’ and
> ‘org-cite-biblatex-prepare-preamble’.
This is probably the path of least resistance for users who want to use 
biblatex-chicago out of the box, rather than as a basis for deriving a specific 
style.

Here is the relevant section 4.51 of the biblatex-chicago manual:

 With the addition of the author-date styles to the package, I 
 have provided three keys for choosing which style to load, 
 notes, authordate, and authordate-trad , one of which you put in 
 the options to the \usepackage command. The default way of 
 loading the notes + bibliography style has therefore slightly 
 changed. With early versions of biblatex-chicago-notes , the 
 standard way of loading the package was via a call to biblatex , 
 e.g.:

 \usepackage[style=chicago-notes,strict,backend=bibtex8,%
 babel=other,bibencoding=inputenc]{biblatex}

 Now, the default way to load the style, and one that will in the 
 vast majority of standard cases produce the same results as the 
 old invocation, will look like this:

 \usepackage[notes,strict,backend=biber,autolang=other,%
 bibencoding=inputenc]{biblatex-chicago}

 (In point of fact, the previous biblatex-chicago loading method 
 without the notes option will still work, but only because I’ve 
 made the notes & bibliography style the default if no style is 
 explicitly requested.) If you read through biblatex-chicago.sty, 
 you’ll see that it sets a number of biblatex options aimed at 
 following the Chicago specification, as well as setting a few 
 formatting variables intended as reasonable defaults (see 
 section 4.4.1, above). Some parts of this specification, 
 however, are plainly more “suggested” than “required,” and 
 indeed many publishers, while adopting the main skeleton of the 
 Chicago style in citations, nonetheless maintain their own house 
 styles to which the defaults I have provided do not conform.

 If you only need to change one or two parameters, this can 
 easily be done by putting different options in the call to 
 biblatex-chicago or redefining other formatting variables in the 
 preamble, thereby overriding the package defaults. If, however, 
 you wish more substantially to alter the output of the package, 
 perhaps to use it as a base for constructing another style 
 altogether, then you may want to revert to the old style of 
 invocation above. You’ll lose all the definitions in 
 biblatex-chicago.sty, including those to which I’ve already 
 alluded and also the code that sets the note number in-line 
 rather than superscript in endnotes or footnotes. Also in this 
 file is the code that calls cmsamerican.lbx , which means that 
 you’ll lose all the Chicago-specific bibstrings I’ve defined 
 unless you provide, in your preamble, a \DeclareLanguageMapping 
 command adapted for your setup, on which see section 7 below and 
 also §§ 4.9.1 and 4.11.8 in biblatex.pdf .

 What you will not lose is the ability to call the package 
 options annotation, strict, short, and noibid (section 4.4.3, 
 above), in case these continue to be useful to you when 
 constructing your own modifications. There’s very little code, 
 therefore, actually in biblatex-chicago.sty , but I hope that 
 even this minimal separation will make the package somewhat more 
 adaptable. Any suggestions on this score are, of course, 
 welcome.

All the best,
Tom

--
Thomas S. Dye https://tsdye.online/tsdye