Re: oc-biblatex and biblatex substyles

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Hi there,

Sorry for the slow reply. 

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Hello,
>
> Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:
>
>> I wonder if oc-biblatex should support loading biblatex-derived libraries,
>> e.g. biblatex-chicago?
>>
>> There’s a quite a few of these libraries:
>>
>>    $ tlmgr search --global "biblatex-" | wc -l
>>      66
>>
>> (This is somewhat overestimating the true number of “biblatex-*”
>> packages).
>>
>> These libraries are typically nie because they are (i) easier to configure
>> than biblatex for a specific style and (ii) actually support some
>> \usepackage keywords that can’t be used by biblatex (e.g. ibidtracker for
>> biblatex-chicago).
>>
>> Thus, it might be able to at least support
>>
>>     #+cite_export: biblatex-$SUBSTYLE
>>
>> E.g. #+cite_export: biblatex-chicago.  But oc-biblatex would likely also
>> have to be able to pickup biblatex-* packages in
>> org-latex-(default-)packages-alist...
>>
>> So maybe it’s a can of worms?
>
> I don't know enough about BibLaTeX to answer that question. What does it
> entail to "support loading biblatex-derived libraries" in practical
> terms? I assume \usepackage{biblatex-chicago} instead of
> \usepackage{biblatex}, with a different set of options and commands,
> too.

While I haven’t looked through other styles, I would assume the user
commands (“\*cite*”) remain the same.  Only The library differs.  But
sometimes it may introduce new options to the package.

> It may be possible to define a new variable, e.g.,
> ‘org-cite-biblatex-package‘, defaulting to ("bilatex" . nil). It would
> contain entries like (SUBSTYLE . OPTIONS) and would be used to build the
> proper \usepackage invocation.
>
> I also plan to allow custom commands in "oc-biblatex.el", so it could
> also handle commands introduced by the substyles.
>
> How we would select substyle from the document is not clear, tho.

> Another possibility it to write, e.g., "oc-biblatex-chicago.el" and
> define a new ‘biblatex-chicago’ export processor, re-using most
> functions from "oc-biblatex.el". It would probably only be necessary to
> re-define ‘org-cite-biblatex-export-citation’ and
> ‘org-cite-biblatex-prepare-preamble’.
>
> WDYT?

Maybe that is a good way.  But e.g. a student once preferred an even more
obscure style, biblatex-aer which builds on biblatex-chicago to make a
style similar to a specific journal.  It could get old quickly...

OTOH, we could select some key derivatives to support.

Kind regards,
Rasmus

-- 
And I faced endless streams of vendor-approved Ikea furniture. . .