Comment 2 for bug 611941

Hi Jack,

David is right, the default behaviour obeys the SBL standard. The firstpagewithref was added for those of us who would also like our first citation of an article to include the specific page. I consulted a few of my tutors, whom edit various journals in the field, and the behaviour of firstpagewithref was designed to reflect the most often used convention in the real world.

I'd have a quick check of your citation guidelines for whatever it is you're contributing to before removing the full reference to the journal article from the first citation. The full range of page numbers is generally considered to be a necessary part of a proper citation.

However, if you're sure, then to try to help you immediately, try this:

In sblref.sty change lines 253 and 254 from:
          \ifthenelse{\not\equal{\csname type@b@\@citeb\endcsname}{article}%
                      \and%
to:
          \ifthenelse{%\not\equal{\csname type@b@\@citeb\endcsname}{article}%
                      %\and%

I think that should work. Though it may leave you with no page reference. See if including the option firstpageref and the above change is satisfactory. If not, comment back, and I'll take a closer look.

The code has changed a significant amount since I last looked at it!!!!!!! David, I understand why you would want to prevent code replication by lumping similar code fragments together, but the variable names are a little opaque at the moment, and is much harder to read. Do you think you could add a bunch more comments in please?