Htydjtk

I use cleveref for in-document references, and find it to be clever. However, I typically want to refer to figures (for example) within parentheses. What I do now is this

usepackage{cleveref}

...

X exhibits Y (cref{fig:foo}).

but what I would like to do is something like

X exhibits Y cref{fig:foo}. % Parentheses omitted in code but not in output

Ideally I would have some way to omit parentheses in output when needed.

Referencing Section 8.2.1 of the cleveref documention,

Cross-reference formats for single cross-references are defined or
redefined using the crefformat and Crefformat commands, which are
used by the cref and Cref commands respectively. These take two
arguments: the cross-reference type, and the formatting code:
crefformat{type}{format}

For your purposes, we can use, for example:

crefformat{figure}{(Figure~#2#1#3)}

Crefformat{figure}{Figure~#2#1#3}

Note that I've used crefformat for use with the cref command (not beginning of sentence), and Crefformat for use with the Cref command (beginning of sentence).

This gives

A complete MWE follows

% arara: pdflatex

% arara: pdflatex

documentclass{article}

usepackage{cleveref}

crefformat{figure}{(Figure~#2#1#3)}

Crefformat{figure}{Figure~#2#1#3}

begin{document}



begin{figure}[!h]

    rule{3mm}{2mm}

    caption{August}

    label{fig:foo}

end{figure}



X exhibits Y cref{fig:foo}.



Cref{fig:foo} is a cross reference at the beginning of a sentence

end{document}

I would not modify the workings of cref and friends directly. Instead, I would create a new macro called pcref -- short for "parenthetic cref", I suppose -- as follows:

newcommandpcref[1]{(cref{#1})}

As you can probably guess, pcref places round parentheses around the output of cref. No need for lots of separate crefformat directives. This approach preserves access to the standard definition of cref, should the need to do so arise.

For the following screenshot, I loaded the hyperref package and specified the cleveref option nameinlink, in order to make visible what is, and is not, produced by cref.

documentclass{article}

usepackage[colorlinks,allcolors=blue]{hyperref} % optional

usepackage[noabbrev,nameinlink]{cleveref}

newcommandpcref[1]{(cref{#1})}

begin{document}

begin{figure}[t!] caption{foo}label{fig:foo}end{figure}

begin{figure}[h!] caption{bar}label{fig:bar}end{figure}

begin{table}[h!] caption{foo}label{tab:foo}end{table}



dots pcref{fig:foo}, pcref{fig:foo,fig:bar}, pcref{tab:foo,fig:bar}, dots



bigskip vs.



bigskip

dots cref{fig:foo}, cref{fig:foo,fig:bar}, cref{tab:foo,fig:bar}, dots



end{document}