Making an Index of Plant Names

I'm translating a Sanskrit text full of plant names.  In a previous project of this type, I created a simple bilingual index, Sanskrit-English and English-Sanskrit.  I did not include Latin binomials and, most regrettable, I didn't include any of the source-referencing and thought that went into my translation choices.  I had compiled all this material, but I didn't share it with the public.  With the current project, I want to use a database to collect the information about each plant cumulatively and in a single place, and I want to have a straightforward way of presenting this complex data in the book.

TLDR: as I write, I just use the Sanskrit name of the plant, and the Glossaries- Extra package replaces it with the English translation from my bib file and also constructs the alphabetical glossary entries at the back of the book.  E.g., I write "take the \gls{dhava} plant" and I automatically get "take the axelwood plant" and an index entry at the back of the book giving the Latin name etc.

Biblatex, citations and bibliography sorting

"I want to sort in-text citations by year, but bibliography by name."  So begins one of the questions at a Stackexchange.  That's just what I want too.

I want to put multiple references in a \cite{} command without caring about their sequence, and have them automatically print in year-order.  Then, I want my bibliography to be ordinary, i.e., printed in author-date order.

The discussion at the above site is tricky, but the answer by moewe works. 

NB: update in 2024. After biblatex ver. 3.18, the way to do this changed.  The old, pre 3.18, method is appended below.  But since 2022, 

Current, post-2022 method

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-comp,
  % sortcites=true, % not needed here because it is implied by style=authoryear-comp,
]{biblatex}
\AtBeginRefsection{\GenRefcontextData{sorting=ynt}}
\AtEveryCite{\localrefcontext[sorting=ynt]}
\addbibresource{mybibliography.bib} 

\begin{document}
  Lorem \autocite{key2000, key1900}

  ipsum \autocite{key1900, key2000}

  \printbibliography
\end{document}

There is another post by moewe that rewrites the \cites command so that also obeys sortcites (which it doesn't by default).

Old, pre-2022 method, for historical interest

In a nutshell here's what you actually do:

\begin{document}
\usepackage[sorting=ynt,sortcites=true]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{mybibliography.bib}
\AtBeginDocument{\assignrefcontextentries[]{*}}

\begin{document}
Hello world!\footcites{ref1,ref3,ref0,ref4}
\newrefcontext[sorting=nyt]
\printbibliography
\end{document}

This will print your footnoted citations in ascending order of year, and your bibliography in ascending order of author.

Guṭkās

Sanskrit booklets, or guṭkās, contain several works collected between one set of covers.  They were presumably copied sequentially by their owners as a vade mecum of useful knowledge.

Biswas 0891 (available digitized, no. 090393 at http://www.jainlibrary.org/menus_cate.php) is a series of catalogues of MSS in Jaina libraries in Rajasthan.  Volume 2 (1954), 73 ff. has a section that describes 222 such booklets, and lists their contents in detail.  A study of these particular collocations of texts would provide a valuable insight into reading habits, the circulation of texts and knowledge, and the personal tastes and obsessions of pre-modern Indian readers.

JabRef

Good! The new beta of JabRef, 2.6b3, now has a properly-working interface to JSTOR. One can search by keyword for JSTOR entries, and JabRef lists the hits and lets you import whatever you want to your bibtex database. JabRef even helpfully marks possible duplicates. Very nice indeed, especially for us humanists.

Get your JabRef here: http://jabref.sourceforge.net/

At the moment, JabRef and Mendeley seem to be moving forward fast. They approach the problem of bibliography management slightly differently, and offer different feature-sets. However, both are emerging as seriously useful tools.