Re: bibliography with certain canonical reference

Hi Julian,

I think there are actually two possible approaches here, depending on 
whether you want to keep this entirely within your present APA setup, or 
whether Augustine is part of a larger body of patristic/classical 
material for which a canonical-reference model would be useful.

1. Keep APA and add the canonical locator only to the citation occurrence

If all your other references are author–year, I would probably keep your 
present APA setup unchanged.

ConTeXt citations can take a |righttext| parameter. With APA this is 
particularly convenient because |righttext| is added as supplementary 
material inside the parenthetical citation.

So instead of:

\cite[authoryear][main::augustine1991confessions]

you can use:

\cite
[alternative=authoryear,
righttext={X.33.50}]
[main::augustine1991confessions]

which should give:

(Augustine, 1991, X.33.50)

while all your ordinary citations can remain:

\cite[authoryear][main::someotherwork]

and continue to produce the normal:

(Author, 2020)

If you want the work title to be explicit as well, you could equally write:

\cite
[alternative=authoryear,
righttext={{\em Confessions} X.33.50}]
[main::augustine1991confessions]

The useful distinction here is that |X.33.50| belongs to this particular 
*citation occurrence*, not to the bibliographic identity of the 1991 
edition. So there is no need to add it permanently to the |.bib| record, 
nor to create a special rendering just for Augustine.

2. Use SBL modelling if Augustine is part of a larger 
patristic/classical corpus

If, however, the book contains many references to Augustine or other 
ancient/patristic texts with canonical locators, then the module 
|context-sbl| may be worth considering.

The SBL implementation provides a |@classictext| category specifically 
for classical texts and ancient works by Church Fathers. In that model, 
the ancient work itself can be kept distinct from the modern edition or 
translation being used.

Schematically:

@classictext{augustine-confessions,
author = {Augustine},
title = {Confessions},
shorttitle = {Conf.},
crossref = {augustine1991confessions},
}
@book{augustine1991confessions,
...
}

The canonical locator then belongs to the citation of the ancient work, 
while the 1991 translation remains the bibliographic edition behind it.

This is a more structural solution than |righttext|, and is useful when 
canonical references are not merely occasional exceptions but a 
recurring feature of the document.

So, roughly:

APA + righttext
-> simplest solution for a few isolated canonical locators
SBL + @classictext
-> structural solution for a corpus of ancient or patristic texts

I would not switch an otherwise APA-based document to SBL merely to 
solve one Augustine citation. For your present example, |righttext| is 
probably the simplest and most appropriate answer.

Incidentally, your question is very useful feedback for the new 
bibliography material on the ConTeXt Garden. This particular case — 
keeping an author–year style while adding a canonical or work-specific 
locator only to selected citation occurrences — deserves a small 
explicit example there.

I should also mention that ANSS-CE is expected to receive, this autumn, 
a set of additional chapters devoted specifically to bibliography and 
citation management in ConTeXt. Those chapters are currently being 
written and are intended to provide a more systematic treatment of 
datasets, renderings, local and cumulative bibliographies, citation 
occurrences and locators, specialised styles such as SBL, and 
multilingual or multiscript bibliography.

That does not make the Garden material redundant. On the contrary, the 
Garden remains the natural place for concise, task-oriented examples and 
for cases that emerge from actual user questions — like this one.

Best,

JP


Le 16/08/2026 à 01:54, jbf a écrit :
>
> It is possible that the answer to my question already lies somewhere 
> in the extensive (new) bibliography material in contextgarden, but if 
> so I have missed it. And indeed it may be a very simple solution, but 
> I can't work it out at the moment.
>
> I am typesetting an academic work by an author who wants local (end of 
> chapter) bibliographies as well as, obviously, a final complete 
> bibliography. No problem. I can do that and in fact have done so 
> successfully. My problem lies with one particular set of citations 
> from Augustine's/Confessions/, where the canonical references are 
> something like Augustine, 1991, /Confessions/ X.33.50.  All I can 
> manage to produce at the moment is the usual author-year APA inline 
> format (Augustine, 1991) [Obviously we are referring to a modern 1991 
> translation, but that is immaterial here].
>
> My current set up is:
>
> \usebtxdataset
>    [main]
> [references.bib]
> \usebtxdefinitions
>    [apa]
>   
> \definebtxrendering
>    [chapterlist]
>    [apa]
>    [dataset=main,
>     sorttype=authoryear]
> \definebtxrendering
>    [finallist]
>    [apa]
>    [dataset=main,
>     sorttype=authoryear]
>
> And where I need to reference Augustine inline I write, e.g. 
> \cite[authoryear][main::augustine1991confessions] which gives me 
> (Augustine, 1991). Is there is a way I can also include X.33.50 in 
> this inline reference, but only for the Augustine citations? All other 
> citations are strictly author-year.
>
> Julian
>

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