How to turn off sentence case for bibstyle 'univie-ling'

Question

I want to use biblatex with the style univie-ling, which sets titles in sentence case automatically. However, since I have been managing the casing of entries externally with JabRef for some time, I would like to generally keep bibstyles form setting the cases. Manually protecting all titles with {} is not an option because (a) it would also prevent JabRef from doing its thing and (b) my .bib is too big at this point.

As suggested in other posts (e.g here), I tried switching that feature off using \DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{#1}, but that did not change the output:

I am not very familiar with the syntax used for bibstyles, but what I need to overrule seems to be line 582 in univie-ling.bbx:

\DeclareFieldFormat[article,book,mvbook,inbook,collection,mvcollection,incollection,inproceedings,thesis,unpublished]{titlecase}{\MakeSentenceCase*{#1}}%

By commenting this line, I was able to achieve the desired result and leave the cases in the .bib-file untouched,

but I am trying to find a less invasive (and update-resistent) solution to this problem, other than creating my own style.

MWE

\documentclass{scrbook}
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
    @BOOK{colu92,
        AUTHOR = {Christopher Columbus},
        TITLE = {How I Discovered {America}},
        YEAR = {1492},
        PUBLISHER = {Hispanic Press},
        ADDRESS = {Barcelona}
    }
    @ARTICLE{gree00,
        AUTHOR = {R. J. Green and U. P. Fred and W. P. Norbert},
        TITLE = {Things that Go Bump in the Night},
        YEAR = {1900},
        JOURNAL = {Psych. Today},
        VOLUME = {46},
        PAGES = {345-678}
    }
    @ARTICLE{phil99,
        AUTHOR = {T. P. Phillips},
        TITLE = {Possible Influence of the Magnetosphere on {American} History},
        YEAR = {1999},
        JOURNAL = {J. Oddball Res.},
        VOLUME = {98},
        PAGES = {1000-1003}
    }
    @ARTICLE{jame76,
        AUTHOR = {Kelly James and Harris, Jr., George and Wilby Wollops},
        TITLE = {{American} Independence and Magnetism},
        YEAR = {1776},
        JOURNAL = {Revol. Tracts},
        VOLUME = {32},
        PAGES = {34-55}
    }
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[%
    backend=biber,%
    style=univie-ling,%
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\DeclareFieldFormat{titlecase}{#1} % should turn-off sentence casing
% but here this line doesn't change the result
\begin{document}
    \nocite{*}
    \printbibliography
\end{document}

moewe · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-07T13:51:11.733

univie-ling uses type-specific field formats for sentence casing

\DeclareFieldFormat[article,book,mvbook,inbook,collection,mvcollection,incollection,inproceedings,thesis,unpublished]{titlecase}{\MakeSentenceCase*{#1}}%

(though this applies to almost all of the common entry types, except @online).

This means you need to counter this definition with a type-specific definition of your own

\DeclareFieldFormat[article,book,mvbook,inbook,collection,mvcollection,incollection,inproceedings,thesis,unpublished]{titlecase}{#1}%

This gets quite long and is possibly error-prone if univie-ling changes its type list.

A simpler alternative is to to use the starred version, which clears any type-specific settings first

\DeclareFieldFormat*{titlecase}{#1}

For more details about type-specific formatting see Remove Quotation Marks from Style.

\documentclass{scrbook}
\usepackage[
  backend=biber,
  style=univie-ling,
]{biblatex}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{titlecase}{#1}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@BOOK{colu92,
  AUTHOR    = {Christopher Columbus},
  TITLE     = {How {I} Discovered {America}},
  YEAR      = {1492},
  PUBLISHER = {Hispanic Press},
  ADDRESS   = {Barcelona},
}
@ARTICLE{gree00,
  AUTHOR  = {R. J. Green and U. P. Fred and W. P. Norbert},
  TITLE   = {Things that Go Bump in the Night},
  YEAR    = {1900},
  JOURNAL = {Psych. Today},
  VOLUME  = {46},
  PAGES   = {345-678},
}
@ARTICLE{phil99,
  AUTHOR  = {T. P. Phillips},
  TITLE   = {Possible Influence of the Magnetosphere on {American} History},
  YEAR    = {1999},
  JOURNAL = {J. Oddball Res.},
  VOLUME  = {98},
  PAGES   = {1000-1003},
}
@ARTICLE{jame76,
  AUTHOR  = {Kelly James and Harris, Jr., George and Wilby Wollops},
  TITLE   = {{American} Independence and Magnetism},
  YEAR    = {1776},
  JOURNAL = {Revol. Tracts},
  VOLUME  = {32},
  PAGES   = {34-55},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
  \nocite{*}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

How to turn off sentence case for bibstyle 'univie-ling'

MWE

1 Answers1