Hi Julian, As I mentioned previously, getting a form such as |GS §22| to appear as the bibliographic citation while still keeping a proper APA-style record required looking more closely at the grammar of |shorthand|.
What became clear quite quickly is that |shorthand| does not play the role one might intuitively expect. In particular, ConTeXt’s |alternative=short| is not simply a way of saying “use the bibliographic shorthand I have supplied”; it belongs to a different, internally generated short-form mechanism. The interesting point, however, is that ConTeXt’s bibliography machinery leaves us rather more room to manoeuvre than the APA interface alone might suggest. In particular, |\definebtx|, together with the associated BTX setup mechanism, makes it possible to define a citation form that reads the stored bibliographic data directly and combines the |shorthand| value with the locator supplied in the citation. I am sending you the MWE together with its |.bib| file. I hope it corresponds closely enough to the precise case you described: the bibliographic entry keeps |Second Vatican Council| as the author, |GS| is stored separately as the shorthand, and the in-text form can be rendered as |GS §22|. I would still regard this as something that deserves further testing rather than as the final word on the matter. In particular, the mechanism should be tested with several distinct documents and several different shorthand/locator combinations, not only with a single occurrence of /Gaudium et Spes/. If it proves robust, it would be useful to document the behaviour and the limits of the method properly on the ConTeXt Garden wiki. And, of course, if someone finds a simpler or more elegant way of doing the same thing within the existing BTX machinery, that would be excellent — and very much worth documenting there as well. Then, as Hans would put it, we might suddenly feel the joy of discovering the simple solution we had been looking for all along. Best, JP Le 19/08/2026 à 09:57, Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context a écrit :
Hi Julian,I have now got a working solution for your Vatican-document case while keeping the bibliographic record properly in APA form.The idea is to keep the full institutional author in the |.bib| file and add a separate field:shorthand = {GS},ConTeXt preserves that field even though the current APA specification does not use it itself, and it can be accessed directly with |\btxdirect{shorthand}|.A small wrapper then gives: \ConventionalCite{vat21965gs}{§22} which produces: (GS §22) while the normal APA citation still gives: (Second Vatican Council, 1965) and the bibliography remains unchanged in APA form.I have compiled and tested this successfully. I am attaching the complete |.tex| test file (and the .bib) so that you can try it directly. The next step, if useful, would be to see whether this can be turned into a proper BTX citation alternative instead of using the small wrapper command.JP Le 19/08/2026 à 09:46, Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context a écrit :Hi Julian,I think I have now identified the difficulty more precisely. In ConTeXt’s current APA implementation, citations are essentially built around the author–date model, and the bibliographic categories do not naturally provide a field for a conventional siglum such as |GS|. This is why |righttext| does not replace the core citation: it is simply appended to it.The key |alternative=short| is also somewhat misleading in this context. It does not mean “use a free bibliographic abbreviation such as GS”; rather, it refers to ConTeXt’s own internally generated short-form mechanism. So it is important to clarify exactly what this |short| does — and what it does not do.Technically, ConTeXt does preserve an additional BibTeX field such as |shorthand={GS}|, and I have verified that it can be read back directly. The difficulty is that the current APA specification does not recognize |shorthand| as a normal field for a |book| entry, so the standard APA citation machinery ignores it. Moreover, |alternative=short| does not mean “use my siglum”; it invokes an internally generated short form. The problem, therefore, is not storing |GS|, but finding a clean way to make APA use that stored value as the citation form.With SBL, this difficulty is much less artificial, because the style is specifically designed for scholarly references in which one can more naturally distinguish between the full bibliographic record, the conventional abbreviation of a work or document, and the internal locator. This is precisely one of the aspects I am currently documenting for ConTeXt.I am nevertheless looking for an elegant solution that stays within APA for your particular case. The encouraging point is that ConTeXt already knows how to preserve and retrieve |shorthand={GS}|; what remains is to integrate that value cleanly into a reusable citation form, without misusing the |author| field or hard-coding |GS| in the document.JP Le 19/08/2026 à 05:43, jbf a écrit :I was able to add a shortauthor = {GS} in the .bibfile and tried alternative=short in \cite. Together with the appropriate righttext it results in (<empty>, GS §22) so almost there, in a way, if we could avoid that <empty>, but maybe we can't.Julian On 17/8/26 20:26, Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context wrote:Julian, Thanks — that is very useful, and I think we are now essentially there.Since |righttext| is appended literally after the author, could you try including the comma there as well?(\cite [alternative=author, righttext={{, ca. 350 BCE/2009}}] [main::aristotle2009ethics]) If it behaves as your previous test suggests, this should give: (Aristotle, ca. 350 BCE/2009)That would be a pleasantly simple solution: |alternative=author| supplies the author, while |righttext| supplies the historical/edition dating information without requiring any change to the bibliography data or the APA rendering itself.It would also be worth checking afterwards whether the outer parentheses can be handled by the citation machinery itself, but I would first confirm this minimal form.JP* Aristotle might add one complication: if character is formed by repeated action, those repeated actions cannot themselves be normatively neutral. A just /hexis/ (ἕξις) requires the practice of just actions, which in turn requires some prior account of what counts as just. This is one reason why the /Nicomachean Ethics/ leads so naturally into the /Politics/: the formation of character depends on laws, education, and ultimately on the ordering of the political community.Le 17/08/2026 à 11:16, jbf a écrit :Before retiring for the night I have quickly checked out your suggestion (and don't worry about the change of date to 2009, since this is the real date I need to deal with):[alternative=author, righttext={{ca. 350 BCE/2009}}] [main::aristotle2009ethics] produces: Aristotle ca. 350 BCE/2009Nearly there, so to get parentheses around it and produce (Aristotle, ca. 350 BCE/2009), this is how I treated the entire paragraph where the citation appears:Aristotle understood that character is formed through repeated action. We become just or unjust, courageous or cowardly, temperate or self-indulgent through what we repeatedly choose and practise (\cite[alternative=author, righttext={{ca. 350 BCE/2009}}][main::aristotle2009ethics]). Actions become habits, habits shape character, and character influences what becomes easier or harder to perceive and choose. Human beings remain capable of change, but freedom gradually acquires a history.Julian On 17/8/26 17:35, Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context wrote:No problem at all, Julian — take your time. Translation work has a way of absorbing the whole day! I’ll be interested to hear what you get from the test when you have a chance to try it.Have a good evening. JP Le 17/08/2026 à 09:07, jbf a écrit :Caught up in other work right now JP (translation), and already evening here, so it might be tomorrow before I can get back to this. I'll let you know how it goes.Julian___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist :[email protected] /https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage :https://www.pragma-ade.nl /https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive :https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki :https://wiki.contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
@book{vat21965gs,
author = {{Second Vatican Council}},
title = {Gaudium et Spes},
subtitle = {Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World},
year = {1965},
publisher = {Libreria Editrice Vaticana},
shorthand = {GS},
}
julian-vatican-gs22-mwe.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
\usebtxdataset
[main]
[julian-vatican-gs22-mwe.bib]
\usebtxdefinitions[apa]
% ------------------------------------------------------------
% Conventional siglum citation.
%
% The bibliographic record keeps the institutional author,
% while the in-text citation uses the conventional shorthand
% stored in the .bib file.
% ------------------------------------------------------------
\definebtx
[apa:cite:shorthand]
[apa:cite]
[left={(},
right={)}]
\startsetups btx:cite:shorthand
\btxdirect{shorthand}%
\ifx\currentbtxrighttext\empty\else
\btxspace
\currentbtxrighttext
\fi
\stopsetups
\starttext
\subject{A conventional citation to \emph{Gaudium et Spes}}
The opening of paragraph 22 of \emph{Gaudium et Spes} provides a useful
example of a document that has both a full institutional bibliographic
identity and a conventional scholarly abbreviation.
The Council writes:
\startquotation
The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the
mystery of man take on light.
\stopquotation
This affirmation introduces the Christological anthropology developed
throughout the paragraph: Christ reveals humanity to itself and makes
its highest vocation intelligible.\footnote{See
\cite
[alternative=shorthand,
righttext={§22}]
[main::vat21965gs].
The full bibliographic record is retained under the institutional author,
Second Vatican Council.}
The same source can therefore be cited conventionally in running text as
\cite
[alternative=shorthand,
righttext={§22}]
[main::vat21965gs],
without replacing the institutional author by the abbreviation
\quotation{GS} in the bibliographic data.
For comparison, the ordinary APA author--date citation is
\cite
[alternative=authoryear]
[main::vat21965gs].
\blank[2*big]
\subject{Bibliography}
\placelistofpublications
[method=dataset,
dataset=main]
\stoptext
___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : [email protected] / https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive : https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki : https://wiki.contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
