Dashed bibliography with alphabetic style

Question

I recently switched a document where the bibliography was generated with bibtex using the amsalpha bibstyle to biblatex. The alphabetic style looks nice enough, but I am missing the dashes that amsalpha generated if an author had multiple entries. biblatexes documentation states that the dashed option is only available for authoryear and some other style, but not for alphabetic. Why is that, and how do I get the dashes back?

T. Verron · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-09 21:50:38Z

up vote 6 down vote accepted

An alternative solution is to use the ieee-alphabetic style, provided by the biblatex-ieee bundle. I'm not sure yet that there isn't any critical difference with the alphabetic style, but it has the essentials at least: alphabetic labels and grouping of similar authors with dashes.

\usepackage[style=ieee-alphabetic]{biblatex}

Output

edited Mar 9 at 21:50

answered Mar 9 at 16:46

T. Verron
4,576634

	Thank you! Looks OK. For the record: This style is loaded with `\usepackage[style=ieee-alphabetic]{biblatex}`. Strangely enough, `\usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex}` does not work, maybe I should update TeXlive. – Percival Ulysses Mar 9 at 18:12
	Oh, right, wanted to add it, forgot for whatever reason. Thanks for reminding me! Btw, if `ieee-alphabetic` works, `ieee` should as well, as they're part of the same package! What's the error, exactly? – T. Verron Mar 9 at 21:50
	It just does not compile with `ieee`, but since I don't need it right now, I don't care too much. Thanks again! – Percival Ulysses Mar 9 at 22:01
	Other things I noticed about the `ieee` style: It is only localized for the english language, and I don't like how URLs are formatted. The latter can be changed by adding `\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{url = URL\addspace ,}` in the preamble. – Percival Ulysses Mar 9 at 23:09
	The documentation of the `biblatex-ieee` package is very short (1 page of instructions and 3 pages of examples), but it does address the url issue. About localization, I tested it on a french document of mine and it seems perfectly localized. What strings are you missing? – T. Verron Mar 9 at 23:27

T. Verron · Answer 2 · 2013-03-09 17:19:38Z

Based on the (now deleted) idea of T.Verron you can use a bibstyle which supports the dash-option. Instead of the predefined bibliography environment of authortitle you can use the default of alphabetic. All needed options to provide the labels are down by the style alphabetic:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic,bibstyle=authortitle]{biblatex}

\DeclareNameAlias{author}{default}
\DeclareNameAlias{editor}{default}
\DeclareNameAlias{translator}{default}

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelalphawidth}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{shorthandwidth}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\list
     {\printtext[labelalphawidth]{%
        \printfield{prefixnumber}%
    \printfield{labelalpha}%
        \printfield{extraalpha}}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\labelalphawidth}%
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
      \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
      \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}%
      \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{##1\hss}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

\defbibenvironment{shorthands}
  {\list
     {\printfield[shorthandwidth]{shorthand}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\shorthandwidth}%
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
      \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
      \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}%
      \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{##1\hss}}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}


\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
Text 
\cite{knuth:ct,knuth:ct:a,knuth:ct:b,knuth:ct:c,knuth:ct:d,knuth:ct:e}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

enter image description here

To setup the format of the dash you can define the dash as follows:

\renewcommand*{\bibnamedash}{\mbox{\textemdash\space}}

enter image description here

Thank you. But somehow … I have a feeling that there exists a more elegant solution – or that there should exist one, at least.
For whatever reason, the space after the dash seems far too large.
@PercivalUlysses: The more elegant solution would be the implementation of the feature in the style alphabetic itself.
"[…] implementation of the feature in the style alphabetic itself" I agree.
traditionally, the length of the dash is 3 ems. that can be decided at the (la)tex level, which is why amsalpha.bst (and other ams biblio processors) encode the duplication as \bysame.

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Dashed bibliography with alphabetic style

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