Devanagari initials in BibTeX

Question

I'm writing up a paper in number theory, and there are a few number theorists from India whose work is relevant to it, and which I would hence like to reference to. Yet, even though I've managed to enable the Devanagari script by switching to the XeLaTeX enginge, I've been unable to make BibTeX get the initials right.

I've been able to make it work for the cyrillic script by using the xecyr package. So there has to be a way. I'd be grateful for a hint.

EDIT: I can't get Biber to work, so I'd be very interested in understanding the techniques used in xecyr.

And here is a bit of sample code:

@book{ramanujan,
    author = "\hi{श्रीनिवास} \hi{ऱामानूजन}",
    series = "Notebooks",
    volume = 4,
    year = 1920
}

along with

\newcommand{\hi}[1]{\begin{hindi}{#1}\end{hindi}}

and the "alpha" bibliography style.

Answer 1

Not an answer.

I do not know the "alpha" style.

There is nothing special about xecyr: it just uses the usual Unicode-aware packages and compilation method.

xecyr works by using (1) the article documentclass: (2) the packages polyglossia, fontspec, and natbib; (3) a font with Cyrillic glyphs: (4) and compiling with xelatex.

See the file rubibtex-ex-x.tex in the xecyr document folder. (Do texdoc xecyr for documentation.)

Swapping over to package biblatex instead of natbib required changing 3 lines of code in a 7-codeline file.

So: mapping the changes to Hindi (and making Russian not the main language any more) gives:

I put a title= field in, to show its location, borrowed a Russian bibentry from another question for comparison, and arbitrarily selected an authortitle style (initials can be set via the package options - see the manual).

Biblatex also auto-detects language settings from polyglossia and from babel, so hard-coding font switching in is not required.

This can be used as the starting point of your question, if you like.

If you use bibtex with its lack of ability, you will quickly find (if I may call it so) a "plethora" of convolutions waiting to greet you.

Whichever process you chose as the optimal path to the solution for your requirements, either bibtex or biblatex, will depend on constraints that you have not (yet) surfaced to anyone in a position to help.

MWE

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{ramanujan,
    author = {श्रीनिवास ऱामानूजन},
    title={no title},
    series = {Notebooks},
    volume = {4},
    date = {1920},
    langid={hindi},
  hyphenation={hindi},
  }
@book{Baranov2001,
address = {Санкт-Петербугр},
author = {Баранов, Николай А},
title = {{Эволюция взглядов}},
year = {2001},
  langid={russian},
%  hyphenation={russian},
}

\end{filecontents*}


\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Noto Serif}
\newfontfamily\hindifont{Shobhika}
\newfontfamily\russianfont{Noto Serif}

\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage{english}
\setotherlanguages{hindi, russian}


\usepackage[
    style=ext-authortitle-ibid,
    bibencoding=auto,
    autolang=other, 
    language=auto,
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Text text \parencite[14]{ramanujan} and \parencite[pp 15-16]{Baranov2001}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

Answer 2

The issue has been resolved by doing the following two things:

A) Using the answer given in

How can I use ucharclasses to change the font for a special script and then restore to what it was before?

EXCEPT for the important amendment that [Script=Devanagari] was added to the "hindifont" line

and

B) Emulating the xecyr package by using the commands

\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x0931}{\derha}
\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x093E}{\dea}
\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x092E}{\dem}

\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x094D}{\decon}
\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x0936}{\desha}
\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x0930}{\dera}
\DeclareUTFcharacter[\UTFencname]{x0940}{\deii}

along with

@book{ramanujan,
    author = "{\desha}{\decon}{\dera}{\deii}\hi{निवास} {\derha}{\dea}{\dem}\hi{नूजन}",
    series = "Notebooks",
    volume = 4,
    year = 1920
}

Thanks a lot to @JavierBezos and all the others who helped clarifying the issue, including @Cicada and @moewe.

Answer 3

I got a similar pb, with devanagari included in the title.

You must work in XeLaTeX.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec} 
\newfontfamily{\SA}[Script=Devanagari]{Annapurna SIL} %for devanagari
%bibliography
\usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex} 
\addbibresource{xxx.bib} %Imports bibliography file
\begin{document}
Text (\cite{huet__2014})
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Then in your .bib, add: {\SA} before the text in devanagari:

@misc{huet__2014,
    title = {{\SA}संधि saṃdhi},
    url = {http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/67.html#sandhi},
    language = {fra},
    number = {Version 3.05},
    urldate = {2018-04-09},
    journal = {Dictionnaire Héritage du Sanscrit},
    author = {Huet, Gérard},
    year = {2014}
}

And you get: