Re: [O] Citations, continued

[Richard Lawrence]

Stefan Nobis <address@hidden> writes:

> Richard Lawrence <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I know these commands are convenient, and that not having them would
>> introduce this class of errors, but the question is whether they are
>> so important that it's worth providing an equivalent for them in
>> non-LaTeX backends.
>
> Hmmm... I don't see this as a big problem. Either the exporter or some
> tool has to be able to read from the bibliography database and has to
> understand at least parts of the available fields (e.g. author and
> year to enable author-year style citations). Based on this it should
> be easy to only output some of the fields (e.g. only author).

Well, a lot of the time, it probably is.  But what if the author's name
is, say, `John von Neumann' (to use a recently-mentioned example)?  Then
the exporter needs to figure out (1) whether to output the full name or
just the last name; if the latter, (2) whether the last name is
`Neumann' or `von Neumann'; and if the latter, (3) how to capitalize the
last name in the context where it appears.

> But anyway: Some tool is needed to generate the bibliography with all
> its data - this tool has to handle all these details and therefore it
> should be not too hard to get partial data from it.

That is true.  Some tool does have to do this, and there are tools that
are designed for it outside of LaTeX (like CSL processors) that Org
could rely on.  But I really don't have any idea how easy it would be to
make the exporter interact with them in a fine-grained way like this, or
what constraints they would place on citation support in Org.  Does
anyone have a sense of this?

> BTW: I don't think any special formatting should be required - ASCII
> or even HTML would never look the same as a LaTeX generated PDF. So
> minor drawbacks are IMHO not as important as to be able to express
> important details in the source.

That is true.  The question we are trying to reach a consensus on is
just what constitutes `important'. :)

> I think, the syntax should be quite flexible (at least easy to extend,
> with compact, nice looking extension-syntax).

Yes, I agree.  Still, as I said elsewhere, I think it's really important
to draw a clear line between the `main' citation syntax, which encodes
features that are important enough to support fully on all backends, and
the syntax for extensions, which encode features that might only work on
some backends or in one's personal setup.  I think this is important for
document portability and so authors and editors know what they can rely
on.

I also think it's important because I suspect the only way we're going
to get a working Org citation syntax is if we try very hard to limit
what goes into the first category to something (much) less than
`everything we can now do with LaTeX'.  We can always move more stuff
into the first category later on, if it becomes clear that it's needed.

I certainly don't mean to be telling people that the LaTeX features they
are now relying on are not useful, or not important.  (I apologize if
I'm coming off that way!) I just think some of them might not be *so*
useful that they are worth the effort to fully support on other
backends, at least initially.

> If some backend lacks support for some feature, maybe someone finds
> the time to fix it (and then org-mode would rule the world
> :)). Otherwise a simple fallback (default citation style, output
> citation string unchanged,...) will be used.

IMHO, this is really only acceptable for features that fall in the
second category.  If there are `core' features of Org citations that
don't work on all backends, then there isn't really anything gained by
using Org citations instead of just sticking with LaTeX (or another
backend-specific citation format).

I am personally totally fine with a syntax that allows you to say things
like:

[cite: see @Doe99 for more. :latex-command SomeEsotericCitationCommand]

or

[cite: see @Doe99 for more. :custom-type my-custom-type]

as long as it is obvious to an author that these citations might not
export correctly on all backends, in contrast to a citation makes use of
only the `main' Org citation syntax.  Individual authors are in a better
position to decide when that tradeoff is acceptable to them.

Best,
Richard