Can I cite something while specifying exactly what text will appear at that place?

Question

First up, I'm using natbib.

I'm trying implement a citation style (Thankfully only a few citations, so I'm happy to work things by hand) that is essentially of the following form:

• At the point of citation one has a superscript number, referring to a footnote (well, \sidenote, actually)

• The footnote¹ contains version 1 of the citation, for example

¹Fname LName, Title (Publisher info) pageno.

• The citation also appears in the bibliography, in version 2:

LName, FName Title Publisher Info

I was thinking of using a command

\newcommand{\mycite}[2]{%
  \sidenote{\modifiedcite{#1}\citetext{#2}}%
}

where \modifiedcite generated an entry in the bibliography from a .bib file, but placed nothing in the text at that point.

Ideally, one would actually generate the footnote from the information contained in the .bib file together with a page number, but this is far beyond me.

Edit: I'm not married to natbib, but I had a look at the biblatex so-called manual, and my goodness, I think I'd have to learn a new language to use it.

Here are some clarifying points:

This is for my wife's honours project (in music). LaTeX is completely alien to her, so I'm just taking her Wrod document and typesetting it properly. I don't want to learn a whole new package for a <15 page article. I'm not going to use this sort of system ever again.

The thesis uses something the university's citation guidelines call MLA, but having had a look at the online MLA citation style guidelines (including TeX-based solutions), I find it hard to recognise as such. For instance, it asks for basically a complete bibliographic record for a source for the first time it is cited (in an endnote, but I'm using a wide-margin format and using \sidenote, no matter the complaints), with a page number reference. After that, each citation of the same work gets an 'Author-surname, page-no.' end/sidenote. Then there is a bibliography, which is more than just the works cited, and each entry is in a subtly different style to before (as outlined above).

To make things easier, I'll remove all prescriptions, and ask: what is the best way to do this, keeping in mind the payoff between reproducibility/good practice/time and effort.

Answer 1

A recent question mentioned a revision of tufte-latex that allows one to use biblatex instead of natbib.

It sounds like biblatex's built-in style verbose meets most of your requirements, but every citation after the first are printed with titles. I've made a small edit to the citation style to avoid this. To disambiguate citations to multiple works by the same author(s)/editor(s), you can use the shorttitle field as I've done below. biblatex can (likely) be configured to perform disambiguation with title/shorttitle automatically, but since this is a one-off there isn't much point in pursuing such a feature.

\documentclass[nobib]{tufte-handout}
\usepackage{hyphenat}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=verbose,citepages=omit,dashed=false,maxcitenames=1]{biblatex}

\ExecuteBibliographyOptions{citetracker=true}

\renewbibmacro*{cite:short}{% based on cite:short from verbose.cbx
  \printtext[bibhyperlink]{\printnames{labelname}}%
  \iffieldundef{shorttitle}
    {}
    {\setunit*{\nametitledelim}%
     \printfield[citetitle]{labeltitle}}}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{bertram,
  author = {Bertram, Aaron and Wentworth, Richard},
  title = {Gromov invariants for holomorphic maps on Riemann surfaces},
  journaltitle = {J.~Amer. Math. Soc.},
  volume = {9},
  number = {2},
  date = {1996},
  pages = {529--571}}
@Book{companion,
  author = {Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Frank and Samarin, Alexander},
  title = {The LaTeX Companion},
  edition = {1},
  publisher = {Addison-Wesley},
  location = {Reading, Mass.},
  date = {1994}}
@Book{poetics,
  author = {Aristotle},
  editor = {Lucas, D. W.},
  title = {Poetics},
  shorttitle = {Poetics},
  series = {Clarendon Aristotle},
  publisher = {Clarendon Press},
  location = {Oxford},
  date = {1968}}
@Book{rhetoric,
  author = {Aristotle},
  editor = {Cope, Edward Meredith},
  commentator = {Cope, Edward Meredith},
  title = {The Rhetoric of Aristotle with a commentary by the late Edward Meredith Cope},
  shorttitle = {Rhetoric},
  volumes = {3},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  date = {1877}}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\section{First citations}

\subsection{Subsection}
First citation with pre- and postnotes
\autocite[See, for example][10--15]{companion}.

\subsection{Subsection}
First citation in a sidenote with only page reference;
pages field is omitted. \autocite[528--530]{bertram}

\subsection{Subsection}
First multi-citation
\autocites(Compare)()[10]{poetics}[528--530]{rhetoric}.

\section{Second citations}

\subsection{Subsection}
Second citation with only prenote
\autocite[See, for example,][]{companion}.

\subsection{Subsection}
Second citation; labelname is not unique so add a short title
to the .bib file \autocite{poetics}.

\subsection{Subsection}
Second citation; labelname is not unique so add a short title
to the .bib file \autocite[59--61]{rhetoric}.

Add a vertical offset before printing citation. Note that autocite
moves punctuation for you, but sidenote doesn't
\sidenote[][20pt]{\cite[See][\pno~570, last paragraph]{bertram}}.

\section*{References}
\printbibliography[heading=none]
\end{document}