How to change the appeareance of bibliography item labels in amsrefs?

Question

Assume that I'd like to set the item labels in the "references" list in amsrefs in, say, boldface (or in lining numbers - I have oldstyle numbers set throughout the document). I can do it in citations in the text (obtained through \cite) by means of redefining \citeform; but how to do it for the references list?

Answer 1

You can change the labels by redefining \BibLabel; for reference, here's the original definition (as given in amsref.sty):

\newcommand{\BibLabel}{%
    \hfill
    \Hy@raisedlink{\hyper@anchorstart{cite.\CurrentBib}\hyper@anchorend}%
    [\thebib]%
}

In the following example I patched \BibLabel with the help of \patchcmd from the etoolboxpackage using an auxiliary command (\biblistlabelfont) so that the labels will appear using boldfaced oldstyle numerals:

\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage{amsrefs}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\newcommand{\biblistlabelfont}{%
    \normalfont
    \bfseries\footnotesize
}

\patchcmd{\BibLabel}{\thebib}{\biblistlabelfont\oldstylenums{\thebib}}{}{}

\begin{document}
\cite{lamport}
\cite{knuth}
\cite{patashnik}

\begin{bibdiv}
\begin{biblist}

\bib{knuth}{book}{
      author={Knuth, Donald~E.},
      title={{TeX} and {M}etafont, {N}ew {D}irections in {T}ypesetting},
     publisher={American Mathematical Society and Digital Press},
     address={Stanford},
     date={1979},
}

\bib{lamport}{book}{
      author={Lamport, Leslie},
      title={{LaTeX}: {A} {D}ocument {P}reparation {S}ystem},
      edition={Second},
      publisher={Addison-Wesley},
      address={Reading, Massachusetts},
     date={1994},
}

\bib{patashnik}{misc}{
      author={Patashnik, Oren},
      title={{BibTeX}ing. {D}ocumentation for {G}eneral {BibTeX} {U}sers},
      how={Electronic document accompanying BibTeX distribution},
      date={1988},
}

\end{biblist}
\end{bibdiv}

\end{document}