Change easily how figures, tables, equations.. are cross-referenced based on what is recommended in style guides such as MLA, APA, IEEE

Question

Context

Many writing and referencing styles, as you know, require certain specific guidelines when cross-referencing images, tables, equations, sections etc...

Per example, in the APA style you would adopt the following examples when cross referencing tables and images:

"As shown in Table 2 ..." or "As illustrated in Figure 3 ..."

For the MLA style: you would use: "As illustrated in Fig. 1"

For the IEEE style: "Fig. 4. Intercomplex crosstalk characteristics"

etc...

I am writing a thesis and I want to know kindly what package(s) & what cross-referencing commands should I use in order to make cross-referencing very easy to change between different styles in the future (following exact styles' guidelines), surely the \ref{XYZ} won't do it as this would mean I had to go and change all the instances of figures, tables, equations etc...

I want kindly a very easy way to switch between APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE etc.. at least not more difficult that adding a couple of lines in the preamble of the thesis. I would be hopeful of not doing the whole thing manually.

Kindly can I know how to do that in APA (Figure 3, Table 4) and in MLA (Fig. 1). What lines of LaTeX code can do that?

I apologize if this seems like a neophyte question, I do not know what is the best approach that would lead to the least headache in the future.

The question has some similarities in terms of pros and cons of cross-referencing packages to the question: Cross-reference packages: which to use, which conflict? but is not duplicate since non of the answers explain how to transform automatically a Figure 1 to Fig. 1 or Table 1 and Tab. 1 or Chapter 1 and Chap. 1 or vice versa depending on specific styles (referencing/Writing styles) such as IEEE, APA, Chicago, Harvard etc...

In other words, is there a package which allow me to plug in something like APA and then all cross-referencing of figures, tables, equations and chapters are changed accordingly to the style? Then later I might decide to switch to MLA, can I easily do that?

Or at least if no package exist that takes into consideration styles: and let us say cleveref is the best option for customization, can anyone kindly tell me how to "marry" [if we can say that :-) ] cleverref package with the APA or with MLA or with IEEE.

There are many who are interested in such answers which this question provide an opportunity to elucidate these solutions.

So you use BibLaTeX APA style, you definitely want to follow also the same exact style in cross-references.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.