I'm having trouble getting biblatex to break lines in a sensible way in the bibliography. Specifically, it seems that the line cannot be broken within the specification of chapter and/or page numbers if the default prefix for pages is empty.
I do not want to disable pagination prefixes globally because it is useful to be able to specify cases where entries' pagination is non-default and should include a prefix e.g. to indicate that this work is cited by section or paragraph, rather than by page.
Mostly, the breaks are fine just because there is no need to break at this point. So the example below is fairly specific and altering it slightly eradicates the problem. In my real bibliography, of course, I can't just change the book title or chapter number to make the lines easier for TeX to break!
MWE:
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{new-stuff,
author = {Watt, Brian},
title = {Happy Times with Penguins},
publisher = {Harvard University Press},
address = {Cambridge, MA},
year = 1995,
pagination = {section}}
@inbook{den-art-coll,
crossref = {den-coll},
title = {Personal Chips and Getting Oneself Good},
pages = {345--564},
chapter = 89}
@inbook{harvey-art-coll,
crossref = {old-stuff},
title = {Personal Chips and Getting Oneself Good},
pages = {345--564},
chapter = 89}
@suppbook{den-coll-intro,
crossref = {den-coll},
title = {Introduction},
pages = {1--9}}
@book{den-coll,
author = {Till, Jr., Dennis E.},
booktitle = {Penguin Land and Further North: Human Influence},
title = {Penguin Land and Further North: Human Influence},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
year = 2008,
address = {Oxford and New York}}
@book{old-stuff,
author = {Harvey, Jr., Dennis E.},
booktitle = {Penguin Land and Further North: Human Influence},
title = {Penguin Land and Further North: Human Influence},
publisher = {Someone \& Daughters},
year = 1567,
address = {Oxford},
bookpagination = {paragraph}}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[citestyle=authoryear-comp,bibstyle=authoryear,mergedate=basic,isbn=false,url=false,eprint=false,dashed=true,doi=false,sortcites=true,backend=biber,mincrossrefs=6]{biblatex}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{
page = {},
pages = {},
}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\begin{document}
\autocite{den-art-coll, den-coll-intro, harvey-art-coll}
\textcite[1--3]{new-stuff}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
What should I be doing differently to avoid this problem? Specifically, how do I persuade TeX to break the line following the chapter and before the page numbers when this is appropriate?
That is, I take it that the best break probably follows 'Chap. 89,' just before the first page in the page range. But TeX seems unwilling to break the line at this point. If I add a single letter to the book title, TeX breaks the line before 'Chap.' which suggests that it is treating 'Chap. 89, 345--' as a single unit which seems clearly undesirable.
NOTE: A solution has been developed in chat and will be posted here tomorrow. So no need to answer this unless you just relish the challenge!
\linebreak[1]is certainly better than the status quo but it does, as you say, seem a little drastic. – cfr Aug 12 '14 at 14:17