Re: bibtex-mode wishes

[Jim Ottaway <j.ottaway@lse.ac.uk>]

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Below <mbelow@antithese.de> writes:

    >  - If I crossreference an entry, the referencing entry should be
    >    sorted before the entry referenced to, otherwise bibtex wont be
    >    able to solve the reference.

 I have changed `bibtex-sort-buffer' to achieve this by fiddling with
 the sort keys:

(defun bibtex-sort-buffer ()
  "Sort BibTeX buffer alphabetically by key.
Text outside of BibTeX entries is not affected.  If
`bibtex-sort-ignore-string-entries' is non-nil, @String entries will be
ignored."
  (interactive)
  (save-restriction
    (narrow-to-region
     (bibtex-beginning-of-first-entry)
     (save-excursion
       (goto-char (point-max))
       (bibtex-end-of-entry)))
    (bibtex-skip-to-valid-entry)
    (sort-subr
     nil
     ;; NEXTREC function
     'bibtex-skip-to-valid-entry
     ;; ENDREC function
     'bibtex-end-of-entry
     ;; STARTKEY function
     (lambda ()
       (let* ((case-fold-search t)
	      key entry-end xref-match)
         (re-search-forward bibtex-entry-head)
	 (setq key
	       (buffer-substring-no-properties
		(match-beginning bibtex-key-in-head)
		(match-end bibtex-key-in-head)))
	 (save-excursion
	   (bibtex-end-of-entry)
	   (setq entry-end (point)))
	 (if (re-search-forward
	      "^[ \t]*crossref[ \t]*=[ \t]*"
	      entry-end t)
	     ;; If there is a cross-reference, make a new key that
	     ;; will be less than the cross-referred item's key.
	     (progn
	       (setq xref-match (bibtex-search-forward-field-string entry-end))
	       (concat (buffer-substring-no-properties
			;; Trim the braces/quotes and replace the last
			;; character of the key with a space
			;; (makes it string< than book key). 
			;; Concatenate this with the actual entry key,
			;; so that it is sorted properly with other
			;; entries with the same cross-reference.
			(1+ (car xref-match))
			(- (cdr xref-match) 2))
		       " "
		       key))
	   key))))))

It seems to work; perhaps I should send this to the maintainer.

Regards,

Jim Ottaway