Re: [O] Citations, continued

[Thomas S. Dye]

Hi John,

John Kitchin <address@hidden> writes:

>> Now, I agree with you that Org mode links are not ideal for citations.
>> Parsing the description is humbug and error-prone, and the descriptions
>> look ungainly in the Org mode document.  I never remember to click
>> citation links in the "right" place!  There is much room for improvement
>> here.
>
> I am not sure how much better it could get. What did you have in mind? I
> could imagine for a cite link with several citations the click action
> could give you an ido-completing/helm selection buffer and you choose
> what you want to do from there. In org-ref the click action is user
> definable, so you can get what you want.

I didn't mean to imply any criticism of org-ref, which I haven't used.
I've been using my own home-grown solution for several years now, have
grown used to its limitations, and of course now have all those legacy
documents to support ...

It would be nice to have the link syntax extended or generalized to
indicate pre- and post-note text, so my home-grown system would use
links compatible with org-ref, say.  I really like the direction Richard
is heading for this reason.  If the distinctions needed for citations
were recognized in the Org mode core, then citation links used by
different systems might be compatible with one another.

More control over how links are displayed would be nice (perhaps let the
user pass in a function?).  When I first worked on setting up citations,
I thought it would be great to color citation links differently from
other links, and I still kind of like that idea.  Also, in my setup, I
don't want to see the full link because the bibtex keys are long and the
full links really break up the flow of the text.  Among other things,
this means I can't be sure just looking at the buffer in its typical
state what kind of link I'm using (footcite, parencite, textcite, etc.).
A little indicator of some kind would be really nice here, but I haven't
found an easy way to display one.

I'm glad you like Samuel's idea about extensible syntax for links.  I
don't know if it is practical or not, but it was one of those ideas that
seemed right on when I first read it.

All the best,
Tom

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