Actually, since some categories (such as @review and @suppbook from
biblatex) do not necessarily have titles of their own, it may be best to
include a few other fields in the sort sequence to accommodate them. The
following sequence may be better:

```
publications.sortmethods.authortitle = {
    sequence = {
        { field = "author",    default = "",           unknown = "" },
        { field = "title",     default = "",           unknown = "" },
        { field = "booktitle", default = "",           unknown = "" }, --
if this is an untitled section (e.g., introduction, foreword, preface) of a
book or a review of a book
        { field = "maintitle", default = "",           unknown = "" }, --
if this is an untitled section or volume in a multivolume collection
        { field = "volume",    default = "",           unknown = "" },
        { field = "part",      default = "",           unknown = "" },
        { field = "date",      default = "9998-13-32", unknown =
"9999-14-33" }, -- some specifications allow date instead of year, month,
day
        { field = "year",      default = "9998",       unknown = "9999" },
        { field = "month",     default = "13",         unknown = "14" },
        { field = "day",       default = "32",         unknown = "33" },
        { field = "index",     default = "",           unknown = "" },
    },
}
```

It is also worth noting that in order for the volume field to sort
properly, its values will have to be padded with leading zeroes; otherwise,
an entry with volume = {2} will be sorted after one with volume = {10}. To
accommodate this, specifications would need to remove the leading zeroes
when they typeset volume and part numbers.

Joey

On Sun, Sep 19, 2021 at 2:02 PM Joey McCollum <jmccollum20140511@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've had to make another update to the general publications support code
> in order to implement a feature of the SBL rendering. Denis Maier has
> opened some issues on the context-sbl GitHub repo (
> https://github.com/jjmccollum/context-sbl) to offer some helpful
> suggestions about needed features and bug fixes. One issue was that SBL
> should order list entries by author and title. Thankfully, there is already
> an authordate sortmethod defined in publ-aut.lua (probably to support the
> Chicago rendering), so I was able to use it as a template for the
> following authortitle sort sequence:
>
> ```
> publications.sortmethods.authortitle = {
>     sequence = {
>         { field = "author",  default = "",     unknown = "" },
>         { field = "title",   default = "",     unknown = "" },
>         { field = "date",  default = "9998-13-32",     unknown =
> "9999-14-33" }, -- some specifications allow date instead of year, month,
> day
>         { field = "year",    default = "9998", unknown = "9999" },
>         { field = "month",   default = "13",   unknown = "14" },
>         { field = "day",     default = "32",   unknown = "33" },
>         { field = "index",   default = "",     unknown = "" },
>     },
> }
> ```
>
> I added this to publ-aut.lua because publications.sortmethods.authoryear
> is defined in that file, but if another location is more appropriate, then
> feel free to let me know, and I can move it! Otherwise, if this looks okay
> to include in a future update, then feel free to incorporate it!
>
> Joey
>