Tuesday, October 09, 2012

natbib-like frontend for chicago-style macros

For some reason, the ACM has baked in chicago-like citation macros into the ACM SIG proceedings LaTeX templates instead of using the far superior natbib that literally everyone else on the planet uses. I'm much more accustomed to typing \citet as opposed to \shortciteN, \citeauthor as opposed to \shortciteANP, etc. So I decided to add this little translation table to my preamble:
\def\citet{\shortciteN}
\def\Citet{\shortciteN}
\def\citeauthor{\shortciteANP}
\def\Citeauthor{\shortciteANP}

\let\chicagociteyear\citeyear
\def\citeyearpar{\chicagociteyear}
\def\citeyear{\citeyearNP}

\def\citep{\shortcite}
Unfortunately, that means I can't use any of the optional arguments to \citep or \citet. If you are just looking for a translation table so you can use the chicago-style macros directly, try this:
natbibchicago
\citet or \Citet\shortciteN
\citeauthor or \Citeauthor\shortciteANP
\citeyear\citeyearNP
\citeyearpar\citeyear
\citep\shortcite
It's crazy how chicago-style macros sometimes use "N" to mean "noun" and other times to be the first half of "NP" being "no parentheses."