combining editor and author in alphabetical order

[elotroalex]

Apologies if this is super easy or was covered before. I've been searching for an answer through the docs and issues, and testing it out for about 3 hours with no luck. I'm trying to build a bibliography of about ~1300 entries—all the secondary sources on 1 particular poet. Many of the books have no authors, just volume editors or editor. The resulting biblios trying different permutations of sort_by don't work to make sure that the list is ordered in alphabetical order of the person (editor or author) listed as the lead. For example, if I use sort_by: author I get editors on top of authors. If I use sort_by: author, editor with order: ascending, ascending I still get the same.

In the end, I need an MLA valid bibliography, which requires people to be listed alphabetically, regardless of whether they are the author or the editor. I'm using modern-language-association.csl, of course.

Did I miss something super basic, or is this ultimately not possible right now?

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On a related note, is there a way to flag order per page, rather than it being universal? Is that in the cue?

[inukshuk]

It's likely not implemented in the current sort functionality. I'd suggest that we define a special sort field called name which combines authors and editors for sorting purposes.

[elotroalex]

I like this idea. I'll take a look in the summer, once the semester madness is over, and see if I can get it working.

[p3palazzo]

Is this issue being worked on?

[elotroalex]

Thank you @p3palazzo for the reminder! In 2018 I was not using a reminder app, so this one fell through the cracks. Now nothing is forgotten. I just added it to my reminders. Will now see if I can squeeze it in in the next couple of months, or give up the towel in September.