Re: [O] Citation syntax: Underscore MUST(?) be allowed in cite keys?

[Stefan Nobis]

Vaidheeswaran C <address@hidden> writes:

> By saying "bibtex is not a requirement",

I said "exporting to bibtex". You talked about Zotero but showed a
bibtex entry. Therefore exporting from Zotero to bibtex may not
be a requirement, there may be a direct interface to Zotero,
eventually.

We are at the start of the development, we are currently CUTTING EDGE!
Therefore tool support (hopefully including guides to configure
citation managers) will evolve in the future.

My main point is: You found a single example that *may* be a problem
with the current syntax. But there are multiple software packages
involved (Zotero, Zotero to bibtex exporter, org-mode, etc.). The
citation syntax will never be able to handle all of the possible
problems in a longer chain of tools. Sometimes its better to fix a
problem at the start of in the middle of this chain.

IMHO it's a good idea to constrain the syntax for keys a little bit
(no whitespace, no arbitrary unicode character, no punctuation at the
end etc.). If in some cases the default configuration of the involved
tools will create invalid keys, than the configuration should be fixed
instead of dropping constraints for the key syntax.

> I hope you don't mean to imply that bibtex users are any less
> blessed or less holy or that their needs wouldn't be "readily"
> catered to.

I am a bibtex user. :)

I want to say, that it is impossible to accomodate for all the
citations managers with any possible configurations of them. Sometimes
we have to state: This case is not supported, please adjust your
configuration.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.