Re: pandoc-style citations

[Alex Fenton <alex.fenton@pressure.to>]

Hi Richard

On 27/04/16 16:09, Richard Lawrence wrote:
> As far as Elisp implementations go, I know of no specific parser for
> Pandoc citation syntax.  But there is support for a Pandoc-like syntax
> (discussed in the threads you read) in the wip-cite branch of Org's
> repository.

> https://github.com/wyleyr/org-mode/

Thanks for your reply, and for all your work on specifying and 
developing this. It looks like that for now I can adapt some of the 
parsing in org-element.el (org-element-citation-reference-parser and 
org-element-citation-parser etc) to get something that works for now in 
standard mainline org.


> Export is where efforts stalled last year.

That's understandable, given that, as you say, it's a complex problem 
given the range of citation styles and output formats. It's still a 
shame given the work that you (pl.) have put into integrating citations 
into the org parser & element tree so they are first class objects.

I don't know whether it's conceivable that the data structures and 
parsing could be integrated into org, with the (presumably) relatively 
easy latex output, which I suspect is the commonest use case, and then 
with some kind of "adequate" output for other targets (html, text, odt) 
- perhaps an output that would require further post-processing by a 
third-party tool such as citeproc or pandoc.

Latex-outputters would be better off and other targets no worse off than 
present, and it might act as a spur to solve the other target formats 
one by one way. But I can see that this has been to some extent 
considered and can also see the arguments against.

>
> You may also want to look at John Kitchin's org-ref, which I believe
> works similar to your homebrew link solution, but has a lot of features
> and may provide a better interface for what you're trying to do:

Org-ref does a lot of nice things, but on this particular point is not 
very helpful, and has nothing to add for the case of multiple cites with 
overall and individual pre/posts. The package states that this is low 
priority b/c this style of citation is rare in scientific publishing (by 
which I guess is meant natural sciences; footnotes with multiple 
citations and linking text are of common in humanities and some social 
sciences).

thanks again and best wishes
alex