Customizing editor types with windycity (biblatex)?

Question

I am using windycity, and I have a work with an author and a reviser. I can add an editor field, but is there any way to customize the output so that it reads revised by and rev. rather than edited by and ed.?

There is a very similar question here for biblatex-chicago, but that doesn't seem to work for me. I'm assuming that their internals are different in this regard.

MWE:

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage[style=windycity,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{jobname.bib}

\begin{filecontents}{jobname.bib}
@book{ dyer-apology-crito-2007,
    author = {Louis Dyer},
    title = {Plato's Apology and Crito},
    editora = {Thomas Day Seymour}, % This may be the wrong approach.
    editoratype = {reviser}, % This may be the wrong approach.
    publisher = {Aristide D. Caratzas},
    year = {2007},
    address = {New Rochelle, NY},
    keywords = {commentary,apology,crito,phaedo},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
Blah, blah, blah.\footcite[][15]{dyer-apology-crito-2007}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

Answer 1

The editor handling in windycity is quite different from what other biblatex styles have implemented. In particular windycity uses a complex set of rules to determine which editors (of which type) are shown, see §3. Editors, Translators, and Compilers of the windycity documentation.

The following adds support for a reviser, but it uses the standard biblatex approach to these sort of things that doesn't quite feel right here.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[style=windycity, backend=biber]{biblatex}

\newbibmacro{reviser}{%
  \iffieldequalstr{editortype}{reviser}
    {\ifnameundef{editor}
       {}
       {\newunit
        \usebibmacro{bytypestrg}{editor}{editor}%
        \setunit{\addspace}%
        \printnames[byeditor]{editor}%
        \newunit}}
    {}}

\renewbibmacro*{edcombos+etc}{%
  \togglefalse{noed}%
  \togglefalse{notrans}%
  \usebibmacro{test:ed}%
  \usebibmacro{test:trans}%
  \iftoggle{noed}
    {}
    {\usebibmacro{edcombos}%
     \usebibmacro{pluga+etc}}%
  \usebibmacro{reviser}}

\begin{filecontents}[force]{\jobname.bib}
@book{dyer-apology-crito-2007,
  author      = {Louis Dyer},
  title       = {Plato's Apology and Crito},
  editor      = {Thomas Day Seymour},
  editortype  = {reviser},
  publisher   = {Aristide D. Caratzas},
  year        = {2007},
  address     = {New Rochelle, NY},
  keywords    = {commentary,apology,crito,phaedo},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
Blah, blah, blah.\footcite[][15]{dyer-apology-crito-2007}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

If the Chicago Manual of Style bibliography style allows for revisers, then I suggest you open a feature request at https://github.com/brianchase/windycity/issues.

Answer 2

On GitHub, the author of windycity suggested handling this with the note field. To make that even a little smoother, he suggested the following:

In american-windycity.lbx, add something like the following to \DeclareBibliographyStrings:

revisedby     = {{revised by}{rev\adddot}},

In the same file you also need to add a preceding declaration:

\NewBibliographyString{revisedby}

Then we can use the note field like this:

note = {\bibstring{revisedby} Thomas Day Seymour}

That will give the desired results in both the bibliography and notes.

The author said that he will likely update windycity to include revisedby, so this whole question will be moot soon.

UPDATE: the author of windycity has added reviser as a built-in editor role, just like compiler or translator. The update has not yet reached CTAN, but you can easily copy the files locally if you want to use it right now. This means that going forward, you don't have to use the note field. You can simply do the following:

@book{ dyer-apology-crito-2007,
    author = {Louis Dyer},
    title = {Plato's Apology and Crito},
    shorttitle = {Apology and Crito},
    editor = {Thomas Day Seymour},
    editortype = {reviser},
    publisher = {Aristide D. Caratzas},
    year = {2007},
    address = {New Rochelle, NY},
    keywords = {commentary,apology,crito,phaedo},
}