Hi Matija, I can provide partial answers to your questions. On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, Matija Šuklje wrote:
* this might be a tough one — (at least in Slovenia's legal circles) legal documents get cited for the first time (e.g. with \cite) the same way as in the bibliography (full name, abbrev, journal, all changes etc.), but for each next time the same legal act gets cited only it's abbrevation should be used.
Once I needed something similar for abbreviations. When the abbreviation is used for the first time include the full meaning of the abbreviation in parenthesis, later, only use the abbreviated form. The approach that I followed was approximately \def\mycite{\dodoubleempty\domycite} \def\domycite[#1][#2]% {\doifdefinedelse{mycite:#2} {\cite[#1][#2]} {cite author, title, etc.% I don't remember the exact commands \setvalue{mycite:#2}{done}} This way, \mycite will give the complete citation the first time, and only the number when used later on. This does not take care of the compatibility method of cite, viz. \cite{ref}.
Also in connection with that — is it possible (already) to utilise \useskip so that not only the empty space of the missing field, but also it's separators (e.g. \inserteditor{ed: }{, }{}) are being skipped?
I am not sure I understand. From what I remember, if the editor is not present, only the last field will be used, so there will be no separators. Aditya