[org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Bruce D'Arcus]

So this is a tentative request/question; I'm not really sure the best
approach here.

This is based on discussion with one of the org-roam-bibtex developers
about what the proper way to indicate an org-roam note is a
bibliographic note; e.g. a note about a bibliographic source.

Traditionally in org-roam, that is in a property drawer; like:

:ROAM_REFS: cite:wallace-wells2019

That is using org-ref syntax there.

So the obvious question is should one just put an org-cite citation
there to do the same thing?

Right now, the answer is clearly no, since they aren't allowed in
property drawers.

But perhaps they should be, just as any link can be?

Except if they are, I recognize, they need to be treated as special
cases; e.g ignored for the purposes of export and such.

WDYT?

Bruce

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Bruce D'Arcus]

Just bumping this.

Another question about where to allow cite elements.

On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 4:18 PM Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So this is a tentative request/question; I'm not really sure the best
> approach here.
>
> This is based on discussion with one of the org-roam-bibtex developers
> about what the proper way to indicate an org-roam note is a
> bibliographic note; e.g. a note about a bibliographic source.
>
> Traditionally in org-roam, that is in a property drawer; like:
>
> :ROAM_REFS: cite:wallace-wells2019
>
> That is using org-ref syntax there.
>
> So the obvious question is should one just put an org-cite citation
> there to do the same thing?
>
> Right now, the answer is clearly no, since they aren't allowed in
> property drawers.
>
> But perhaps they should be, just as any link can be?
>
> Except if they are, I recognize, they need to be treated as special
> cases; e.g ignored for the purposes of export and such.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Bruce

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Tom Gillespie]

Hi Bruce,
    I could certainly imagine using it, and I don't see any issue with
doing it from the point of view of the grammar. Footnotes can appear
in a property drawer without issue, though obviously they don't
export. One question though since I may have missed this in the other
threads is cite: allowed without the square brackets? Either way, org
element just parses the value to a string and it is up to any
consuming application to parse the node property further. Best!
Tom

On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 11:45 AM Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just bumping this.
>
> Another question about where to allow cite elements.
>
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 4:18 PM Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > So this is a tentative request/question; I'm not really sure the best
> > approach here.
> >
> > This is based on discussion with one of the org-roam-bibtex developers
> > about what the proper way to indicate an org-roam note is a
> > bibliographic note; e.g. a note about a bibliographic source.
> >
> > Traditionally in org-roam, that is in a property drawer; like:
> >
> > :ROAM_REFS: cite:wallace-wells2019
> >
> > That is using org-ref syntax there.
> >
> > So the obvious question is should one just put an org-cite citation
> > there to do the same thing?
> >
> > Right now, the answer is clearly no, since they aren't allowed in
> > property drawers.
> >
> > But perhaps they should be, just as any link can be?
> >
> > Except if they are, I recognize, they need to be treated as special
> > cases; e.g ignored for the purposes of export and such.
> >
> > WDYT?
> >
> > Bruce
>

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> writes:

>     I could certainly imagine using it, and I don't see any issue with
> doing it from the point of view of the grammar.

That would be a terrible idea. Exporters are not required to handle all
data contained in properties drawers, so this may introduce errors,
e.g., when trying to number citations.

Therefore, to prevent a whole class of issues, data stored in properties
drawer is seen as plain boring text.

> Footnotes can appear in a property drawer without issue,

That's incorrect. Footnotes cannot appear in a property drawer, per
above.

> One question though since I may have missed this in the other
> threads is cite: allowed without the square brackets?

No it isn't. This would conflict with "cite"-type links, if defined.


Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Tom Gillespie]

> That would be a terrible idea. Exporters are not required to handle all
> data contained in properties drawers, so this may introduce errors,
> e.g., when trying to number citations.

I agree completely. You can't export something that has no anchor in
text that would be rendered. Maybe I misunderstood the original
question, because there is no way that a citation or footnote could be
exported from there, so I think in your conception text that follows
the format of the citations or footnotes isn't actually a citation or
footnote unless it exports as such.

Best,
Tom

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[John Kitchin]

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Not all org files are destined for export. I slightly feel users should be
allowed to put citations in places where it might not make sense in export,
and that they are responsible for knowing what they are doing.

I am sympathetic to the reality that the second half of that statement is a
big ask, and that it can lead to confusion. Nothing stops anyone from
manually typing or pasting a citation into those places though. I would be
inclined to use the activate function to highlight those that are in places
that won't export, rather than limit where people can put them using the
insert mechanism.

John

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin (he/him/his)
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu



On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 1:11 PM Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> wrote:

> > That would be a terrible idea. Exporters are not required to handle all
> > data contained in properties drawers, so this may introduce errors,
> > e.g., when trying to number citations.
>
> I agree completely. You can't export something that has no anchor in
> text that would be rendered. Maybe I misunderstood the original
> question, because there is no way that a citation or footnote could be
> exported from there, so I think in your conception text that follows
> the format of the citations or footnotes isn't actually a citation or
> footnote unless it exports as such.
>
> Best,
> Tom
>
>

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Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Bruce D'Arcus]

I'm not going to defend what Nicolas characterized as a "terrible
idea,", but to explain a bit ...

The idea was motivated by wanting to access org-cite activate and
follow functionality from the property drawer; NOT export (which as
Nicolas says, would cause problems).

The current (recently-added) org-roam org-cite/citation implementation
uses '@key' syntax in the property drawers, which works fine for
indexing (to associate citations to notes about a citation source),
but not of course for the other functionality.

On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 1:02 PM Tom Gillespie <tgbugs@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That would be a terrible idea. Exporters are not required to handle all
> > data contained in properties drawers, so this may introduce errors,
> > e.g., when trying to number citations.
>
> I agree completely. You can't export something that has no anchor in
> text that would be rendered. Maybe I misunderstood the original
> question, because there is no way that a citation or footnote could be
> exported from there, so I think in your conception text that follows
> the format of the citations or footnotes isn't actually a citation or
> footnote unless it exports as such.
>
> Best,
> Tom

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

> Not all org files are destined for export. I slightly feel users should be
> allowed to put citations in places where it might not make sense in export,
> and that they are responsible for knowing what they are doing.
>
> I am sympathetic to the reality that the second half of that statement is a
> big ask, and that it can lead to confusion. Nothing stops anyone from
> manually typing or pasting a citation into those places though. I would be
> inclined to use the activate function to highlight those that are in places
> that won't export, rather than limit where people can put them using the
> insert mechanism.

Not all Org files are destined for export, yet any syntactically correct
Org file is expected to export without fuss. So, allowing citations
anywhere and then let Org later fail without notice may be asking for
trouble.

I understand the problem, but the solution should not be: "let's pretend
export does not exist".

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: [org-cite] citations in property drawers?

[Tom Gillespie]

> I understand the problem, but the solution should not be: "let's pretend
> export does not exist".

From my perspective any org object that is not in a section that
allows org objects could in principle be parsed as such, but it would
not be in the core of the grammar, and it also would have to parse to
something that did not trigger side effects related to export.

Allowing org objects to appear at arbitrary places in the grammar is
definitely not a good idea because in many senses they cannot actually
be those objects. Maybe the syntax could be the same, but they would
have to be "shadow objects" or something like that?

Best,
Tom