Biblatex: Brackets around the author in bibliography, author-year, DeclareFielFormat

Question

I just can't solve my problem. I want that in the Bibliography the authors are put in one [.........] bracket, like e.g. the dinat format does it. (Is not available since I am using Biblatex)

\usepackage[
  backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-icomp,
  ]{biblatex}
\renewcommand*{\mkbibnamefamily}[1]{\textsc{#1}}

\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{citetitle}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{journaltitle}{#1}
\setlength{\bibitemsep}{0.5\baselineskip} 

\DeclareListFormat{author}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}     (*)

Thats my approach, but (*) does not cause any differences.

Thank you for taking your time.

Answer 1

From biblatex 3.12 onwards, you can use \DeclareNameWrapperFormat and \DeclareListWrapperFormat to formt the complete output of a (name) list field (\DeclareNameFormat and \DeclareListFormat only format a single item). See https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/754 and https://github.com/plk/biblatex/pull/829.

So if you want to print the author (or editor and translator in author position) in square brackets, you can simply use

\DeclareNameWrapperFormat{sortname}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}

In full

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[
  backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-icomp,
  ]{biblatex}

\renewcommand*{\mkbibnamefamily}{\textsc}
\DeclareNameWrapperFormat{sortname}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}

\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{citetitle}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{journaltitle}{#1}

\setlength{\bibitemsep}{0.5\baselineskip} 

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\autocite{sigfridsson}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

---

Since you mention dinat in your question, I suspect you actually want something slightly different. We can try and recreate the bibliography format of dinat, which introduces each entry with an author-year label, with biblatex-ext.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[
  backend=biber,
  citestyle=ext-authoryear-icomp,
  bibstyle=ext-authortitle,
  sorting=nyt,
  introcite=plain,
  ]{biblatex}

\DeclareFieldFormat{bbx@introcite}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}
\DeclareDelimAlias*[bbx@introcite]{nameyeardelim}[parencite]{nameyeardelim}
\UndeclareInnerCiteDelims{bbx@introcite}
\renewcommand*{\introcitepunct}{\quad}

\renewcommand*{\mkbibnamefamily}{\textsc}

\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{citetitle}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{journaltitle}{#1}

\setlength{\bibitemsep}{0.5\baselineskip} 

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\autocite{sigfridsson}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

You can read more about introcite in the biblatex-ext documentation (pp. 15-19).

If you prefer square brackets for \parencite/\autocite, have a look at \DeclareOuterCiteDelims.

---

The

\DeclareListFormat{author}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}

had no effect, since author is a name list, whose format needs to be set up with \DeclarNameFormat (and \DeclareNameWrapperFormat). Declarations using the incorrect field type (\DeclareListFormat{author} and \DeclareFieldFormat{author}) are silently ignored.

\DeclareNameFormat{author}{\mkbibbrackets{#1}}

would not have been ignored, but would not have produced the desired output, either, since name formats are quite special and don't work with the usual #1.

Answer 2

For old versions of biblatex (< v3.12, as for example used in overleaf) one can add the \mkbibbrackets to the author macro:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[
  backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-icomp,
  ]{biblatex}
\renewcommand*{\mkbibnamefamily}[1]{\textsc{#1}}

\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{citetitle}{\mkbibemph{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{journaltitle}{#1}
\setlength{\bibitemsep}{0.5\baselineskip} 

\renewbibmacro*{author}{%
  \ifboolexpr{
    test \ifuseauthor
    and
    not test {\ifnameundef{author}}
  }
    {\usebibmacro{bbx:dashcheck}
       {\bibnamedash}
       {\usebibmacro{bbx:savehash}%
        \mkbibbrackets{\printnames{author}}%
        \iffieldundef{authortype}
          {\setunit{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}}
          {\setunit{\printdelim{authortypedelim}}}}%
     \iffieldundef{authortype}
       {}
       {\usebibmacro{authorstrg}%
        \setunit{\printdelim{nameyeardelim}}}}%
    {\global\undef\bbx@lasthash
     \usebibmacro{labeltitle}%
     \setunit*{\printdelim{nonameyeardelim}}}%
  \usebibmacro{date+extradate}}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}


\cite{sigfridsson}
\printbibliography


\end{document}