Re: wip-cite status question and feedback

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 2:15 PM M. ‘quintus’ Gülker
<post+orgmodeml@guelker.eu> wrote:

> I wonder, can the placement of the footnote not just be left to the
> author...? I have the impression that something is being
> over-engineered here with the attempt to automate this, but maybe this
> is just me.

The use case is for users who may author with the expectation of using
one style for output (for example, author-date), but then find they
have to use another (say note-based).

It's not super common, since most scholars operate in fields where
practices are more-or-less consistent.

Scientists, for example, do not use note-based styles, and humanities
people do not use numeric ones.

But people (like me) who, for example, work at the borders of the
humanities and social sciences, can be required to switch among very
different styles. For example, they may submit a manuscript to one
journal that uses an author-date style, and it gets rejected there,
and then submit to another journal which is note-based.

So it is somewhat rare, but is not a purely hypothetical requirement.

Without this, the user would have to modify their entire document to
adjust the formatting, which is a hassle.

It's also not a hypothetical solution, as it's already implemented in
solutions like pandoc, and works well there.

But that currently works correctly for the "American" rules only,
which is why Denis put in an issue there for that, and why he has
weighed in here.

Hope that explains.

Bruce