General ⇒ Showing "X most recent of Y total items" in a CV section

[adam+neuro]

I have been working on writing my CV in LaTeX, because it enables me to easily switch on and off sections using the ifthen package. In some contexts I want to provide a long form CV and in others provide a short form CV, but this way I keep one file that contains all my exploits. Right now I have a lot of conference abstracts (itemized), and I was wondering if it might be possible somehow to have the section title be something like "X most recent of Y total abstracts", where X is set by me as a variable, and Y is automatically determined by the number of items in the list? I think I have an idea of how to only display the number of items I want by using a custom counter and if statements, but I think the custom counter idea wouldn't work for calculating Y, since the total wouldn't be figured until well after the section title is generated. I am very grateful in advance for any ideas or suggestions that can be provided. Thanks!

[nlct]

You could use the databib package (part of the datatool bundle). For example:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{databib}

\def\maxrefs{5}

\begin{document}
% loads acmtr.bib and creates a database called 'references'
\DTLloadbbl{references}{acmtr}
\nocite{*}
\DTLsort{Year=descending,Month=descending}{references}

\section*{\maxrefs\space most recent of \protect\DTLrowcount{references} total items}

\DTLbibliography[\value{DTLrowi}<\maxrefs\OR\value{DTLrowi}=\maxrefs]{references}

\end{document}

This requires:

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latex filename
bibtex filename
latex filename

Regards
Nicola Talbot

[adam+neuro]

Thanks, that sounds promising. I'll give that a try.