Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Nicola <nvitacolonna@gmail.com>]

On 2021-05-25, Alan Braslau <braslau.list@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2021 23:10:34 -0400
> Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 5/24/2021 22:12, Alan Braslau wrote:
>> > On Mon, 24 May 2021 17:53:49 -0400
>> > Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended
>> >> behavior.
>> >>
>> >> If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something
>> >> like:
>> >>
>> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.),
>> >> /Booktitle/. Author.
>> >>
>> >> And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will
>> >> get:
>> >>
>> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.),
>> >> Booktitle. Paymefirst.
>> >>
>> >> The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for
>> >> pieces contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author
>> >> as publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to
>> >> do if you have no editor.
>> > It looks like a missing editor field should be caught. What should
>> > the rule be?
>> >
>> > Actually, @inproceedings should not be used without an editor -
>> > makes no sense. If the author of the paper happens to be the
>> > editor, then the .bib data file should define this with an editor=
>> > field.
>> >
>> > We can change the behavior if a clear case can be made as to what
>> > fallback would make sense. Keep in mind the dictum: "garbage
>> > in/garbage out"...
>> >
>> > Alan
>>
>> For the case of works within works (inproceedings, inbook,
>> incollection, perhaps conference) I would think that the simplest
>> solution is to simply drop it, so that in the example above one would
>> simply get:
>>
>>     Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In /Booktitle/. Paymefirst.
>>
>> Although I do think that, at least for inproceedings, lack of an
>> editor should at least be flagged. A simple compilation of works may
>> have no named editor, of I see no reason to require it for inbook or
>> incollection. Cheap publishers regularly put out such collections of
>> out-of-copyright works.
>>
>> The implicit assumption that a work with no documented publisher is a
>> self-published work is not especially to my liking -- publishers may
>> have good reason to not identify themselves (think of the publishers
>> of the works of Spinoza and, in part, Voltaire) -- but I understand
>> that the APA thinks it important. Of course, if you cannot document
>> the publisher for an entry, you can explicitly list it as unknown or
>> /sine nomine/, as appropriate, to avoid the infelicity of having the
>> author's name just stuck in there.
>
> I sent a simple fix to Hans that handles the missing editor, silently.
> Someone who would want "Anonymous" or "unknown", or anything else can
> always put editor="Anonymous", etc. in their .bib database.

Thank you all for the precious comments.

The current LMTX appears to have almost fixed my issue, except that
inproceedings entries without a publisher have the text "Author"
instead of the publisher's name.

I must say that I have no requirement to use the APA style specifically;
I do it only because it uses the format (Name, Year) for the citation.
I guess that I could use another style (aps seems fine) and just
customize the citation format. I have tried with

    \usebtxdataset[main.bib]
    \setupbtx[default:cite][alternative=authoryear]
    \usebtxdefinitions[aps]

but it seems that the setup command has no effect: the citations still
use numbers.

Nicola


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