Post by Thomas FischerAccording to the official documentation (from Wikipedia), "number" is
neither required nor optional for "book". I assume, most standard styles
for BibTeX adhere this convention and to not include this field in any
output. Enabling this field would mislead users to assume that this
field is actually used.
btxdoc says:
book A book with an explicit publisher. Required fields: author or editor,
title, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume or number, series,
address, edition, month, note.
Post by Thomas FischerGiven that issue and the simplicity of a single click to enable all
fields in the entry dialog, I won't change the default behaviour.
However, if you can show that the "number" field is used by many/major
BibTeX styles to set "book" entries, I will change my mind here...
Is it enough to refer to the standard styles? This is the book method from
plain.bst. Note that the format.number.series method is used, which constructs
a string "series [number]". Without checking further, I would claim that most
styles use number for books:
FUNCTION {book}
{ output.bibitem
author empty$
{ format.editors "author and editor" output.check }
{ format.authors output.nonnull
crossref missing$
{ "author and editor" editor either.or.check }
'skip$
if$
}
if$
new.block
format.btitle "title" output.check
crossref missing$
{ format.bvolume output
new.block
format.number.series output
new.sentence
publisher "publisher" output.check
address output
}
{ new.block
format.book.crossref output.nonnull
}
if$
format.edition output
format.date "year" output.check
new.block
note output
fin.entry
}
J?rgen