How to highlight specific author with asterisk in biblatex

Question

I searched for the answer to my question a lot and I seem to always come very close to it but not quite getting there. Imagine I have an author called "Tarcisio F. Maciel" that I find somewhat special and I would like to mark him with an asterisk in my reference list. With the following code (found in this forum) I can make him bold but appending an asterisk didn't work for me (please not that you need a fairly new distribution of Miktex or Texlive to compile correctly). Do you have an idea? I would like to change as little as possible with the example because I really like the idea of identifying authors by their hash (I have multiple references with him and they should always be highlighted).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=numeric]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
  @incollection{Silva:2014a,
  title={Radio Resource Management for Device-to-Device Communications in Long Term Evolution Networks},
  author={Carlos F. M. Silva and Silva, Jr., Jos\'{e} Mairton B. and Tarcisio F. Maciel},
  booktitle={Resource Allocation and {MIMO} for {4G} and Beyond},
  publisher={Springer Science+Business Media},
  year=2014,
  address={New York, USA},
  editor={Francisco Rodrigo Porto Cavalcanti},
  pages={105-156},
  doi={10.1007/978-1-4614-8057-0_3},
  isbn={978-1-4614-8056-3},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\usepackage{xpatch}% or use https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/40705

\newbibmacro*{name:bold}[2]{%
  \def\do##1{\iffieldequalstr{hash}{##1}{\bfseries\listbreak}{}}%
  \dolistloop{\boldnames}%
}

\newcommand*{\boldnames}{}

\xpretobibmacro{name:family}{\begingroup\usebibmacro{name:bold}{#1}{#2}}{}{}
\xpretobibmacro{name:given-family}{\begingroup\usebibmacro{name:bold}{#1}{#2}}{}{}
\xpretobibmacro{name:family-given}{\begingroup\usebibmacro{name:bold}{#1}{#2}}{}{}
\xpretobibmacro{name:delim}{\begingroup\normalfont}{}{}

\xapptobibmacro{name:family}{\endgroup}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:given-family}{\endgroup}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:family-given}{\endgroup}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:delim}{\endgroup}{}{}

\renewcommand*{\boldnames}{}
\forcsvlist{\listadd\boldnames}
  {{3288e5f9be7ec7c330203382f4e8d8ed}}

\begin{document}
\cite{Silva:2014a}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

Current output:

Current output

Desired output (reproduced with MS Word):

Desired output

Have you tried just enclosing the name and the asterisk in curly braces? -> {Maciel*} — Johannes_B, Dec 22 '17 at 06:21
For the link: The code in the MWE comes from Highlight an author in bibliography using biblatex allowing bibliography style to format it. — moewe, Dec 22 '17 at 07:07
This is what the biber annotation feature is for - see: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/73136/make-specific-author-bold-using-biblatex/304968#304968 — PLK, Dec 22 '17 at 22:29

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '17 at 06:48

An asterisk is easier than bold, actually. The basic idea is the same, but this time we only need to hook into the end of the macros (we only append code), where we add an asterisk if needed. No need for complicated grouping.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=numeric]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
  @incollection{Silva:2014a,
  title={Radio Resource Management for Device-to-Device Communications in Long Term Evolution Networks},
  author={Carlos F. M. Silva and Tarcisio F. Maciel and Silva, Jr., Jos\'{e} Mairton B.},
  booktitle={Resource Allocation and {MIMO} for {4G} and Beyond},
  publisher={Springer Science+Business Media},
  year=2014,
  address={New York, USA},
  editor={Francisco Rodrigo Porto Cavalcanti},
  pages={105-156},
  doi={10.1007/978-1-4614-8057-0_3},
  isbn={978-1-4614-8056-3},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\usepackage{xpatch}% or use https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/40705

\newbibmacro*{name:ast}[2]{%
  \def\do##1{\iffieldequalstr{hash}{##1}{*\listbreak}{}}%
  \dolistloop{\astnames}}

\xapptobibmacro{name:family}{\usebibmacro{name:ast}}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:given-family}{\usebibmacro{name:ast}}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:family-given}{\usebibmacro{name:ast}}{}{}

\newcommand*{\astnames}{}
\forcsvlist{\listadd\astnames}
  {{3288e5f9be7ec7c330203382f4e8d8ed}}

\begin{document}
\cite{Silva:2014a}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

The asterisk really does not stand out as much as boldface would.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 22 '17 at 06:47

You can change the MWE by adding the following code

\newtoggle{addasterisk}

\newbibmacro*{name:bold}[2]{%
  \def\do##1{\iffieldequalstr{hash}{##1}{\toggletrue{addasterisk}}{}}%
  \dolistloop{\boldnames}%
}

\newcommand{\myast}{\iftoggle{addasterisk}{*\togglefalse{addasterisk}}{}}

This use you current code to determine if a name has to be highlighted; if so a switch is activated, and then based on the switch the asterisk is printed of not (changing what you append to the macro based on the following lines)

\xapptobibmacro{name:family}{\myast\endgroup}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:given-family}{\myast\endgroup}{}{}
\xapptobibmacro{name:family-given}{\myast\endgroup}{}{}

How to highlight specific author with asterisk in biblatex

2 Answers2