Problem with biblatex-chem bundle when used with option pageranges=false

Question

I'm using Joseph Wright's excellent biblatex-chem bundle for biblatex emulating the styles of certain chemistry journals. In particular I'm using

\usepackage[style=chem-angew,pageranges=false]{biblatex}

with biblatex version 1.5a. The problem is that this produces output where the page number of an article is preceded by "p.", i.e.

J. P. Perdew, K. Burke, M. Ernzerhof, Phys. Rev. Lett. 1996, 77, p. 3865.

But this behaviour does not match the journal's (Angewandte Chemie) standards as pages of articles should not include a prefix like "p." (and also my professor wants me to get rid of it). While I searched in the appropriate style file of biblatex-chem (chem-angew.bbx) to see which command is connected to the package option pageranges=false I found out that it is \mkpagefirst. The related line in chem-angew.bbx is

\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{pages}{%
\ifbool{bbx:pageranges}{#1}{\mkpagefirst{#1}}%
}

Next I tried to look up the original definition of this command in biblatex.sty in order to use it as a template for a redefinition via renewcommand that suits my needs. But as \mkpagefirst is defined via a cascade of commands I can't figure out how to do it. So any help would be very much appreciated.

(I'm not sure whether this can be regarded as a bug in the biblatex-chem bundle which I should report to Joseph Wright since he might have intended it to work that way.)

Answer 1

Now that I have updated my biblatex to version 1.6 I see that the newly introduced command \mkfirstpage fixes the behaviour of biblatex-chem's package option pageranges=false if one substitutes \mkpagefirst to \mkfirstpage in the chem-angew.bbx file. But as pointed out in the comments to Marco's answer the current version (1.0e) of biblatex-chem is not compatible with biblatex 1.6. Until an official update to the bundle is released I fixed this incompatibility by applying the following changes to the chem-angew.bbx file:
I removed the lines

\renewcommand*{\thebibitem}{\item}
\renewcommand*{\thelositem}{\item}

Furthermore I changed

\renewenvironment*{thebibliography}
 {\list
    {\printfield[labelnumberwidth]{labelnumber}}
    {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\labelnumberwidth}%
    \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
    \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
    \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
    \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
    \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}%
    \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{\hss##1}}
  {\endlist}    

to

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

and

\renewenvironment*{theshorthands}
  {\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]{\hss##1}}}
  {\endlist}

to

\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]{\hss##1}}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

This solved my problem so far. I guess similar changes to the respective style files might be necessary to use the other styles contained in the biblatex-chem bundle.

Answer 2

By using biblatex 1.6 the bundle biblatex-chem produces some errors. I build a minimal example:

\documentclass[ngerman]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\providecommand*\thebibitem{}
\providecommand*\thelositem{}
\providecommand*\theshorthands{}
\usepackage[style=chem-angew,pageranges=false]{biblatex}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{entry1,
author="J. P. Perdew and K. Burke and M. Ernzerhof",
journaltitle="Phys. Rev. Lett.",
volume="77",
year="1996",
pages="3865"
}
\end{filecontents}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\begin{document}
\cite{entry1}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

And I get no "p. 3865".