Alyssa P. Hacker¹ is working on her cv in Org mode. Excited about being able to explore the capabilities of Org-cite, the built-in citation framework,² she starts with the bibliography section.

First attempt

Having already installed its dependency, the Citeproc package, and planning to export her cv in odt and html in addition to LaTeX-based pdf, Alyssa chooses the export format agnostic csl citation export processor,³ and, using cite/n to add entries to the bibliography without printed citations, writes the following document:

#+title: Alyssa P. Hacker
#+options: toc:nil num:nil author:nil date:nil
#+bibliography: alyssa.bib
#+cite_export: csl
[cite/n:@hacker86if;@bitdiddle87inexact;@bitdiddle88complex;
@ator90zero;@hacker91register]
* Publications
#+print_bibliography:

A glance at the result of the pdf export:

suggests that she is on the right track, but Louis Reasoner, her assistant, has a look at the Org source and isn’t entirely satisfied. “I think alyssa.bib contains all of your publications and nothing else. At least in LaTeX, I would use an asterisk to cite everything in the file instead of listing all keys.” he says.

Alyssa changes the citation to

[cite/n:@*]

and presses C-u C-c C-e to export again, but the result is disastrous: the Publications section of the exported document now contains a massive amount of books and papers by other authors in addition to her pieces. “You might need to bind the global bibliography to nil.” says Ben Bitdiddle, looking over Alyssa’s shoulder. After a bit of digging in the documentation and some experimentation,⁴ Alyssa settles on the following implementation of Louis’s suggestion:

# -*- org-export-allow-bind-keywords: t; -*-
#+title: Alyssa P. Hacker
#+options: toc:nil num:nil author:nil date:nil
#+bibliography: alyssa.bib
#+bind: org-cite-global-bibliography nil
#+cite_export: csl
[cite/n:@*]
* Publications
#+print_bibliography:

As she expected, the exported pdf is now identical to that produced from the first version.

Adding sections

Alyssa is so happy with her progress that she calls her friend Eva Lu Ator over to have a look. “Nice indeed!” says Eva. “But couldn’t you have separate sections according to publication type? It could be a subtle way of emphasizing your book.” After another round of documentation digging,⁵ Alyssa changes the part responsible for printing the bibliography to

* Publications
** Books
#+print_bibliography: :type book
** Papers in peer-reviewed journals
#+print_bibliography: :type article
** Conference papers
#+print_bibliography: :type inproceedings

exports the document again, and shows the result to Eva who is pretty pleased with the result:

A final tweak

By now, a small crowd has gathered around Alyssa’s desk, including Lem E. Tweakit, who remarks: “I like when cv bibliographies emphasize the author’s name, especially when most of the pieces are co-authored. I don’t know whether Org can do that, though.” “It should be doable with a Citeproc filter.”⁶ replies Alyssa, and after a while she produces the function

(defun tmp-make-alyssa-bold (rendered-name name _)
  "Make RENDERED-NAME bold when NAME is Alyssa's.
Leave RENDERED-NAME unchanged otherwise. Return RENDERED-NAME."
  (let ((given (cdr (assq 'given name)))
        (family (cdr (assq 'family name))))
    (when (and (string= given "Alyssa P.")
               (string= family "Hacker"))
      (push '(font-weight . "bold") (car rendered-name))))
  rendered-name)

which she adds to the Org file in a source code block and registers as a Citeproc name postprocessing filter with #+bind:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports results :results none
(defun tmp-make-alyssa-bold (rendered-name name _)
  "Make RENDERED-NAME bold when NAME is Alyssa's.
Leave RENDERED-NAME unchanged otherwise. Return RENDERED-NAME."
  (let ((given (cdr (assq 'given name)))
        (family (cdr (assq 'family name))))
    (when (and (string= given "Alyssa P.")
               (string= family "Hacker"))
      (push '(font-weight . "bold") (car rendered-name)))
    rendered-name))
#+end_src
#+bind: citeproc-name-postprocess-functions (tmp-make-alyssa-bold)

Alyssa takes a look at the reexported pdf:

and checks the html and odt versions as well, which are also as expected. “The bibliography part is finished.” she declares. “Now I just have to write the rest of my cv… But there are Emacs packages for the missing sections too, right?”⁷

Appendix

The final form of Alyssa’s cv bibliography (also available as a standalone file):

# -*- org-export-allow-bind-keywords: t; -*-
#+title: Alyssa P. Hacker
#+options: toc:nil num:nil author:nil date:nil
#+bibliography: alyssa.bib
#+bind: org-cite-global-bibliography nil
#+cite_export: csl
#+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports results :results none
(defun tmp-make-alyssa-bold (rendered-name name _)
  "Make RENDERED-NAME bold when NAME is Alyssa's.
Leave RENDERED-NAME unchanged otherwise. Return RENDERED-NAME."
  (let ((given (cdr (assq 'given name)))
        (family (cdr (assq 'family name))))
    (when (and (string= given "Alyssa P.")
               (string= family "Hacker"))
      (push '(font-weight . "bold") (car rendered-name)))
    rendered-name))
#+end_src
#+bind: citeproc-name-postprocess-functions (tmp-make-alyssa-bold)
[cite/n:@*]
* Publications
** Books
#+print_bibliography: :type book
** Papers in peer-reviewed journals
#+print_bibliography: :type article
** Conference papers
#+print_bibliography: :type inproceedings

Alyssa’s BibTeX file, alyssa.bib, can be downloaded from here. The three exported versions are also available: pdf, html and odt.