Re: Citations, continued

[Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>]

Hi Erik and all,

Erik Hetzner <egh@e6h.org> writes:

> I am really, really glad to see people discussing citations in
> org-mode. But I have some concerns about this proposal.
>
> Before extensions are proposed to the pandoc format, I think it is
> important to understand how flexible the combination of pandoc, and
> what citeproc provides. I believe that pandoc can cover most of what
> you want.

> I also believe it would be a mistake to start from the idea of a
> pandoc-style citation syntax that deviates from pandoc. Better instead
> to start from what pandoc does now and find out what isn’t working for
> org-mode users before extending pandoc, especially in ways that are
> not compatible with pandoc.

Actually, I totally agree.  For my own use, I would be completely happy
with just using the Pandoc syntax for citations in Org, without any
modifications.

The only reason I proposed anything else was that it seemed like other
people already know that they need more than the Pandoc syntax provides.
I think the main realistic cases are those where, in LaTeX, you'd use
commands like \citetitle, \citedate, or \citejournal -- citation
commands that pull in just a particular field from the reference,
because that is what the context around the citation requires.  I don't
see a way to do that in the Pandoc syntax.  (But am I missing
something?)  Hence my proposed field-selectors extension.

Personally, I need commands like these so little that I am happy to do
without them.  So maybe my proposal was a bit hasty.  Could we hear from
other people about how badly they need what such commands provide?

> And if extensions are proposed, it would be best to propose them on
> the pandoc-discuss mailing list. It would be wonderful for users if
> the syntax in pandoc-markdown and org-mode could stay aligned.

Yes, I again totally agree.  If people here settle on a syntax that is
close, but not quite the same as, Pandoc's, I will certainly do that.

Best,
Richard