Re: Org citations, CSL and citeproc-el

[torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson)]

Just a second on this; it's a fantastic and useful idea. 

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> writes:

> Dear Simonyi,
>
> Simonyi András <andras.simonyi@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> a few days ago I've released the first public version of 
>> citeproc-el (https://github.com/andras-simonyi/citeproc-el), a 
>> CSL 1.01 citation processor library for Emacs.
>
> Wow!  I don't know if you are aware, but we had discussed the 
> possibility of building something like this on the list a few 
> years back.  At the time it seemed like a lot more work than 
> anyone was willing to do, and so the effort stalled.  Thanks so 
> much for working on this -- it looks like you've done a ton of 
> work!
>
>> The resulting link syntax is rather cumbersome so I'd like to 
>> ask your opinion about introducing an alternative org-mode 
>> citation syntax that handles all of these elements.  One option 
>> would be to use something very similar to pandoc's citation 
>> syntax (which I tried to follow as much as possible in the cite 
>> link descriptions of citeproc-orgref). 
>
> We had a (very) long discussion about implementing a new 
> citation syntax for Org in the spring of 2015.  Most of it took 
> place in February and March; see:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2015-02/threads.html
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2015-03/threads.html 
>
> And here is how I summarized the state of that discussion in 
> June:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2015-06/msg00426.html
>
> The upshot was that we came to agreement on quite a few points 
> about what citation syntax should look like, and those points 
> have been implemented in Org syntax in the wip-cite branch of 
> the Org repo.  (This branch is now long out of date and at the 
> very least in need of a rebase onto current master, I suspect.) 
> It would be really great to get things moving again.  Using your 
> code to provide citation processing during Org export for the 
> syntax that's already been implemented would be the place to 
> start.
>
> There are other aspects of the syntax we agreed on that are not 
> implemented yet; as I recall, the idea was to get a minimal 
> agreeable subset working, and then add to it based on real-world 
> experience and feedback.
>
>> A more general question I'd like to raise how (or whether) you 
>> see citeproc-el's (and CSL's) potential place in the org-mode 
>> ecosystem.  There are a lot of directions which the further 
>> development could take (BibLaTeX support, citeproc-YAML 
>> bibliographies, CSL editing and CSL extensions etc.) and I'd be 
>> grateful to receive your input on which ones I should focus 
>> on. 
>
> Here's my two cents on this. From what I recall about the 
> discussion (it's hard to believe it's already been almost three 
> years...), I would focus on two things:
>
> 1) BibLaTeX support.  Most Org users who want citation support 
> want it primarily for LaTeX export, and BibLaTeX provides a good 
> model of what we should try to achieve in Org citation support.
>
> 2) org-bibtex support.  Org-bibtex is a library that represents 
> citation data via Org's property syntax.  Some people use this 
> and it would be great to have it integrated with the new 
> citation syntax and export.  That would provide an end-to-end 
> citation solution that is completely native to Org and Emacs. 
>
> Again, thanks for jump-starting this effort!  I look forward to 
> contributing to it this spring.