From: Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Citation syntax: a revised proposal
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2015 08:35:03 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87bnkf2tzb.fsf@berkeley.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: m1lhjjsprv.fsf@nobis-it.eu
Hi Stefan,
Stefan Nobis <stefan-ml@snobis.de> writes:
> Aaron Ecay <aaronecay@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I count roughly 50 commands in sections 3.7.1 – 3.7.6 of the
>> biblatex user’s manual (version 2.9a of 24/06/2014). Some of these
>> are quite esoteric, of course, but they are all provided.
>
> There are many commands (and even more private commands are possible)
> in order to help reproducing all the various citation styles out there.
>
> The critical question for org and org users is: How many different
> citation commands are needed in a single document (or needed by a
> single author within all her documents)?
These are very different questions. I think we need to answer the
second, since the syntax for citations will be common to all documents.
> If no single author ever needs more than about a dozen different
> commands (including variations like the genetive versions), the
> [cite:subcommand ...] syntax should suffice.
Yes, I don't disagree. But how do we know that no single author ever
needs more than a dozen different types/commands, across all her
documents, now and in the future? I for one do not feel comfortable
making this judgment a priori. As Aaron said, it's an empirical
question.
>> By way of illustration, Biblatex (AFAICT) doesn’t provide a
>> possessive citation command, which was mentioned by someone in this
>> thread (or its predecessor) as a desideratum. I’d expect a savvy
>> latex user to put in their preamble:
>
>> \newcommand{\citeposs}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}’s (\citeyear{#1})}
>
> This is what the subcommand is for. An author may define "poss" as a
> subcommand and use [cite:poss ...]. Then all the nice gimmicks will
> still work.
If I understand correctly, Aaron and I have two worries about this
approach. First, doing things this way potentially leads to a lot of
redundancy in the code you have to write when defining subtypes, which
is a maintenance hassle and an extra burden on users. Second, it means
that an author who has to deal with a lot of `uncommon' commands has to
remember a lot of subtype names, which are likely to be very similar,
because they represent overlapping groups of options.
Look at, e.g., the commands required in BibLaTeX to support citing
multi-volume works. There are 24(!) of them, because every one of them
is simply a multi-volume version of other combinations of options that
BibLaTeX supports (multi-cite or not? parenthetical or in-text?
footnoted or not? etc.).
For my part, if I were citing multi-volume works a lot, I would
appreciate being able to express all those options using orthogonal
distinctions. Then I could just add
{... :volume 2 ...}
at the end of a citation that already expresses most of those options in
the [cite: ...] part of the syntax. I would personally prefer *not* to
have to write
[cite/SUBTYPE: ...]
and remember which, among those 24 command types, I need to use (and
define) here.
(Also, note that this syntax does not have a way to pass additional
arguments like the volume, so it *can't* say "cite volume 2", even if
with a subtype label it can say "cite this multi-volume work". Citing a
volume in a multi-volume work seems like it might require some ugly
hacking on the subtypes approach, but I have no idea how often people
actually use such citations.)
On the other hand, Tom says that he prefers the latter way of working,
even if it requires a lot of subtypes. This is because it makes the
subtype easy to find-and-replace when changing a document from one
citation style to another. Also, it is simpler to write custom handlers
that dispatch just on the subtype, rather than on a plist of options.
So there are considerations on both sides. In the end, I prefer the
[cite: ...]{:key val ...}
syntax because:
1) it supports both styles of working (subtypes can be represented
like `:type fvolcites')
2) it allows passing additional arguments (e.g., volume number)
3) something like this is needed anyway elsewhere in Org
but I recognize there are some drawbacks to this over the simpler
approach of subtype labels.
Best,
Richard
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-02-27 16:36 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 163+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-02-15 2:29 Citation syntax: a revised proposal Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 2:45 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 3:57 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-15 16:40 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 19:43 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-16 3:34 ` Matt Price
2015-02-16 8:56 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 9:57 ` Rasmus
2015-02-17 17:18 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-17 18:11 ` Rasmus
2015-02-18 0:44 ` Matt Price
2015-02-18 3:38 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 2:24 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-18 4:03 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 9:00 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-18 10:11 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-18 14:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-18 16:38 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 18:44 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 18:46 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 20:54 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-18 21:21 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 21:24 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-18 19:42 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-18 20:47 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-18 22:43 ` Rasmus
2015-02-18 22:35 ` Rasmus
2015-02-19 17:06 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-20 0:10 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-20 16:44 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-20 19:45 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-20 20:01 ` Rasmus
2015-02-20 22:33 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-21 11:58 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 17:25 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-27 0:56 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-27 8:55 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-27 9:56 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 3:12 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-21 12:00 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 20:19 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-21 20:36 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-25 13:59 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-25 16:57 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 22:37 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-26 5:10 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-01 20:35 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-01 21:31 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 0:24 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 8:57 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-03-02 1:37 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 9:23 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 19:11 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:15 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 3:14 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 5:33 ` Avram Lyon
2015-03-03 17:27 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 17:56 ` Avram Lyon
2015-03-04 16:41 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 9:24 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 9:39 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 14:12 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 18:50 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-02 20:14 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 20:34 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 22:17 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 22:33 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 22:45 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 23:05 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 23:27 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 23:42 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 2:48 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 8:43 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 16:59 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-04 0:43 ` Matt Price
2015-03-08 0:16 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 14:23 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 18:54 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:26 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 2:53 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 8:38 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 9:13 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 16:12 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 14:25 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:53 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 14:57 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-03 15:41 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 15:58 ` Ken Mankoff
2015-03-03 16:08 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 17:13 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-10 3:44 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-10 9:49 ` Rasmus
2015-03-11 1:51 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-11 6:04 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-10 16:31 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-11 2:21 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-11 17:33 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-13 18:13 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 5:15 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 9:27 ` Andreas Leha
2015-03-17 16:26 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 20:42 ` Andreas Leha
2015-03-17 21:34 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-18 1:12 ` Matt Price
2015-03-18 15:19 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 18:08 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-26 21:30 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-26 23:50 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-27 8:49 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-27 16:35 ` Richard Lawrence [this message]
2015-02-27 10:09 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 5:48 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 12:22 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 13:53 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 19:02 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-20 5:27 ` Melanie Bacou
2015-02-20 16:49 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-24 7:08 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-25 4:29 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 5:57 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-15 11:17 ` Tory S. Anderson
2015-02-15 11:57 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 17:05 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 8:53 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 17:52 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-15 17:23 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-09 10:40 ` Sebastien Vauban
2015-03-09 10:50 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-15 17:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 17:37 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 17:55 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:30 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-15 18:07 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 18:25 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:05 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-15 19:18 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:38 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-15 20:13 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 20:23 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 9:07 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 16:59 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 17:43 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 18:39 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 19:16 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-16 19:40 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 20:49 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 16:18 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 18:21 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 12:05 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-16 13:10 ` William Denton
2015-02-16 13:42 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 16:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 17:28 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 18:49 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 19:16 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-23 7:26 ` Vaidheeswaran
2015-02-16 16:35 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-16 17:56 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 18:24 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 18:39 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-16 19:19 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-17 6:47 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 16:45 ` Richard Lawrence
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