The possible values for argument sorting
are
nty - sort by name, then by title, then by year
nyt - sort by name, then by year, then title
nyvt - sort by name, year, volume, title
anyt - sort by alphabetic label, name, year, title
anyvt - sort by alphabetic label, name, year, volume, title
ynt - sort by year, name, title
ydnt - sort by year (descending), name, title
debug - sort by keys
none - no sorting is performed
All sorting methods first consider the field presort, if available.
Entries with no presort field are assigned presort
value “mm”. Next the sortkey field is used.
When sorting by name, the sortname field is used first. If it is not present,
the author field is used,
if that is not present editor is used, and if that is not present translator is
used. All of these fields are affected
by the value of max.names
in .BibOptions()$max.names.
When sorting by title, first the field sorttitle is considered. Similarly,
when sorting by year, the field sortyear is
first considered.
When sorting by volume, if the field is present it is padded to four digits
with leading zeros; otherwise, the string “0000” is used.
When sorting by alphabetic label, the labels that would be generating with
the “alphabetic” bibstyle are used. First the shorthand field is
considered, then label, then shortauthor, shorteditor, author, editor,
and translator. Refer to the BibLaTeX manual Sections 3.1.2.1 and 3.5 and
Appendix C.2 for more information.