Feature Request: Multiple Display Fields for Relationship Field

Hello.

I’m working on a listing of references, mostly books, but not exclusively books. I know one of your prime directives to users is to not reinvent the wheel. But I looked at many existing book-related plugins, and none did what I wanted. So, now that that’s out of the way…

I probably only really need to record the author. But for the sake of completeness, and as an academic exercise as I expand my use of Pods, I thought I’d record other credits where available, such as Editor, Illustrator, Forward by.

First Schema and examples
—————————
Custom Taxonomy “credits”
Fields: (none)

Example Data:
*Kemp, Peter
*Chapelle, Howard I.
*Parray, M.H.
*McMillan, Beverly
*Livingston, Susannah
*Rutter, Susan Beaven

Custom Post Type “reference”
Fields:
Authors (relationship to “credits”)
Editors (relationship to “credits”)
Illustrators (relationship to “credits”)

Example Data:

*The Search for Speed Under Sail
Authors: Chapelle, Howard I.
*The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea
Editors: Kemp, Peter
*Aak to Zumbra
Authors: Parray, M.H.; et. al.
Illustrators: Parray, M.H.
Editors: McMillan, Beverly; Livingston, Susannah; Rutter, Susan Beaven

Most references will have authors, but not editors, illustrators, or other credits. To avoid having many empty field entries, I have added a “Role” field (Simple Select) to the “credits” taxonomy and “references” has just a single “credits” field. But in rare cases the same person could be the author of one book and the editor of another. Note that in the real example given above, M.H. Parray is both author and illustrator. I can have two entries,
Parray, M.H., Role = Author
Parray, M.H., Role = Illustrator
But when adding a new “reference”, all that appears in the selection area is
Parray, M.H.
Parray, M.H.
I cannot tell which is M.H. Parray the author and which is M.H. Parray the illustrator. I noticed the “Display Field in Selection List” field on the “Additional Field Options” tab. To test it, I tried entering {@role}, and I got
“Author”
“Illustrator”
No names. That was expected. I then tried {@post_title} {@role} and I got just the post titles.
“Parray, M.H.”
“Parray, M.H.”
Also expected, as the pop-up help says to enter a field, not a comma-separated list of fields.

So my question is, would you be willing to support multiple display fields, so that the selection area could show:
Parray, M.H., Author
Parray, M.H., Illustrator
??

As a workaround, I am putting the role in the title for anything other than an author, e.g.
*Peter Kemp (Editor)
*Howard I. Chapelle
*M.H. Parray
*M.H. Parray (Illustrator)
*Beverly McMillan (Editor)
*Susannah Livingston (Editor)
*Susan Beaven Rutter (Editor)

But this limits by flexibility when displaying the data.

Thanks for considering this request.

Regards,

Greg