Customize biblatex citation style

Question

for citations I normally use 'authortitle-icomp' style. Now I need for a work a little bit more complex styles and I don't know how to start.

For the first reference of a title in a footnote I need:

First name Name, Title. Subtitle (if given), Place and Year (if given), Page (if given)

Like:

For every further reference of the title I have to use a short version:

Name, Title, Page (if given)

Like:

What I have:

\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style=authortitle-icomp,
sortlocale=de_DE,
natbib=true,
isbn=false,
url=false, 
doi=false,
eprint=false,
dashed=false
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{Bibliographie.bib}
\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{last-first}
\DeclareNameAlias{default}{last-first}
\renewcommand*{\multinamedelim}{\addsemicolon\addspace}
\renewcommand{\finalnamedelim}{\addsemicolon\space}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{german}{andothers={et al.},}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection]{title}{Art.: \textit{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection,article]{pages}{#1}
\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\textit{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection]{citetitle}{\textit{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{postnote}{#1}
\DeclareFieldFormat{multipostnote}{#1}

\renewbibmacro*{issue+date}{
    \setunit{\addcomma\space}
    \iffieldundef{issue}
    {\usebibmacro{date}}
    {\printfield{issue}
        \setunit*{\addspace}
        \usebibmacro{date}}
    \newunit}

\renewbibmacro*{date}{\setunit{\addspace}\printdate}

I don't expect a solution for this problem, but maybe you can provide some links for tutorials or documentations. I am still a beginner in LaTeX and especially in BibLaTeX.

Answer 1

The style you describe looks like one of the verbose family would be a good fit. I chose verbose-ibid to preserve the "ibidem" capabilities of authoryear-icomp. You can find a list of all standard styles in §3.3 Standard Styles of the biblatex documentation. If your version of biblatex is up to date, that section will link to style examples in the right margin. (You can find the style examples on CTAN if there is no link in the margins).

With verbose-inote the footnote citations already have the desired general setup: The first citation is long (pretty much the same as the bibliography entry), subsequent citations only mention author and title.

I have slightly modernised the remaining code from your MWE (it should be possible to tell what line does what by comparing with your previous code and possibly searching for the commands in the documentation, but I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about that in the comments). I also decided to use ext-verbose-ibid from my biblatex-ext bundle as basis instead of the standard verbose-ibid, because that makes it easier to change a few things (here mainly the space between location and date).

\documentclass[ngerman]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[backend=biber,
  style=ext-verbose-ibid,
  isbn=false, url=false, doi=false, eprint=false,
  dashed=false,
]{biblatex}

\renewcommand*{\newunitpunct}{\addcomma\space}
\renewcommand*{\subtitlepunct}{\addperiod\space}

\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{family-given}
\DeclareNameAlias{default}{given-family}

\renewcommand*{\mkbibcompletename}{\textsc}

\DeclareDelimFormat{multinamedelim}{\addsemicolon\space}
\DeclareDelimAlias{finalnamedelim}{multinamedelim}


\DefineBibliographyStrings{german}{andothers={et al\adddot},}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection]{title}{Art\addot\addcolon\space\mkbibitalic{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection,article]{pages}{#1}
\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\mkbibitalic{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat[incollection]{citetitle}{\mkbibitalic{#1}}

\DeclareFieldFormat{postnote}{\mknormrange{#1}}
\DeclareFieldFormat{multipostnote}{\mknormrange{#1}}

\renewbibmacro*{issue+date}{%
  \setunit{\addcomma\space}%
  \printfield{issue}%
  \setunit*{\addspace}%
  \usebibmacro{date}%
  \newunit}

\renewcommand*{\locdatedelim}{\addspace}
\letbibmacro{publisher+location+date}{location+date}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{werbick,
  author    = {Jürgen Werbick},
  title     = {Gott verbindlich},
  subtitle  = {Eine theologische Gotteslehre},
  date      = {2007},
  publisher = {Herder},
  location  = {Freiburg},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}
Lorem\autocite[591]{werbick}
ipsum\autocite{sigfridsson}
dolor\autocite[592]{werbick}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

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It's a long-standing issue that there are no intermediate biblatex tutorials for style authors (or those interested in more advanced style modifications). There are some hints at Guidelines for customizing biblatex styles and some of the resources listed in biblatex in a nutshell (for beginners) have sections about style modifications (for example https://github.com/PaulStanley/biblatex-tutorial/releases), but there is no full-on tutorial for style matters.

In 2008 Dominik Waßenhoven wrote a (German) two-part article in Die TeXnische Komödie about his biblatex style (https://archiv.dante.de/DTK/PDF/komoedie_2008_2.pdf, https://archiv.dante.de/DTK/PDF/komoedie_2008_4.pdf). That is pretty much the only resource I know of that deals with more advanced biblatex stuff in article/tutorial form. Note that the articles are more than 10 years old now, many details have changed since then. The overall approach is still the same, but I expect that there will be new, more elegant interfaces for a few things.

You will find lots of questions about all sorts of shenanigans with biblatex on this site and elsewhere on the web.

At some point in your style writing process it may be useful to look at the source code to see how things are done. (See What is the location of the citation command files on macOS? for hints about that.)