custom author field in citar-templates

[wsavran]

Hi! I just started using citar and I'm really loving the package! I'd like to display a custom author field in my citar-templates. I'd like to display the output from citar-shorten-names if there are one or two authors, and then {first-author} et al. if there are more than two authors. I'm new to emacs/elisp, so I'm a bit stuck on how to make this happen. Is there a way to do this using existing functions in citar? I've looked through citar.el, but i don't see any obvious solutions. Thanks!

[bdarcus]

The solution would be to write a new function, similar to citar-shorten-names, and to use that instead in the citar-display-transform-functions.

If I find time, I'll try to do that and update this and put it on the wiki.

Or, of course, feel free to play around with it; it's the way to learn ;-)

[wsavran]

Thank you for the tip. I'm happy about my first legit customization to my emacs. I'll share what I did in case its useful to anyone else.

edit: added response from below so its correct here.

I defined this function in my config.el

(defun ws.refs/prettify-author-names (names)
  "Makes list of author names prettier for viewing in citar"
  (let ((short-names (split-string (citar-shorten-names names) ", ")))
    (if (< 2 (length short-names))
        (concat (car short-names) " et al.")
      (string-join short-names " and "))))

and I set citar-display-transform-functions in my config.el like this

(setq citar-display-transform-functions
    '((t  . citar-clean-string)
     (("author") . ws.refs/prettify-author-names)))

[bdarcus]

The first looks good, the second not. You're not defining the variable; you're setting it. Untested, but should be:

(setq citar-display-transform-functions
    '((t  . citar-clean-string)
      (("author") . ws.refs/prettify-author-names)))

FWIW, the order should probably be swapped; something I need to do when I get to #529.

[wsavran]

it works as is. thanks for the feedback.