Citation style for chronological references in biblatex/biber?

Question

Sorting the references in chronological order can be incredibly helpful for getting a picture of the history that led up to a paper. The "alpha" [GMS93] style of citations gives papers a memorable short tag which usually stays consistent as references are added and removed. But using both can make it hard to find a reference. Is there a citation style like [1993GMS] such that we could sort on the short tag, and still end up with chronologically sorted references?

Answer 1

You could do this with \DeclareLabelalphaTemplate:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareLabelalphaTemplate{
  \labelelement{
    \field[final]{shorthand}
    \field[strwidth=4,strside=right]{year}
  }
  \labelelement{
    \field{label}
    \field[strwidth=3,strside=left,ifnames=1]{labelname}
    \field[strwidth=1,strside=left]{labelname}
  }
}


\begin{document}

\cite{vazques-de-parga}

\printbibliography

\end{document}