I need to make a slightly-less-than-\fullcite

Question

I am attempting to adapt the tufte-latex style to typeset a Ph.D dissertation. The style currently uses the natbib/bibentry package to insert full-text citations as numbered side-notes, and also emits a full bibliography at the end of the document. I would like to modify the document to use a shorter cite format (showing "et al" rather than full author list; removing URLs/DOIs/etc) for these side-note citations, but retain the full citation at the end of the document. I'm also leaning heavily towards using biblatex instead of bibtex, for a variety of reasons.

So the question: is it possible to create a custom, abbreviated citation style and instruct biblatex to use it in some places, and the primary/standard style in the main bib? I don't mind defining a new command (it's not necessary to redefine \fullcite, I'd rather use \abbrevcite or something).

Answer 1

You don't need to define custom cite commands, but just different settings for citations v. bibliographies. For showing "et al" in citations simply use the package options maxbibnames and maxcitenames; for removing certain fields only in citations use \AtEveryCitekey and \clearfield.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[maxbibnames=99,maxcitenames=1]{biblatex}
\AtEveryCitekey{\clearfield{url}}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A. and Buthor, B. and Cuthor, C. and Duthor, D.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
  url = {http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/12806/510},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Some text \footfullcite{A01}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}