Re: Citations, continued

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

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> writes:
>
>> ...so the first step for introducing citation syntax to Org should be
>> compiling a list of all the things such a syntax should represent.
>
> See also 
>
>   <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/72446>

I reviewed that discussion, and also took a (relatively quick) look at
the citation features provided by BibLaTeX and Citation Style Language
processors.  Here's what I've come up with for an initial list of
requirements for citation syntax:

A citation is a textual reference to one or more individual works,
together with other information about those works, grouped together in
a single place.

Within a citation, each reference to an individual work needs to be
capable of containing:
  1) a database key that references the cited work
  2) prefix / pre-text
  3) suffix / post-text
  4) references to page/chapter/section/whatever numbers and ranges.
     This is likely part of the prefix or suffix, but might be worth
     parsing separately for localization or link-following behavior.
  5) a way of indicating backend-agnostic formatting properties.
     Examples of some properties users might want to specify are:
     - displaying only some fields (or suppressing some fields) from a
       reference record (e.g., journal, date, author)
     - indicating that the referenced works should *only* appear in
       the bibliography of the exported document (equivalent of LaTeX
       \nocite)
       
Citations as a whole also need:
  6) [@6] a way of indicating formatting properties for specific export
     backends.  Examples of some properties that users might want to
     specify are:
     - a citation command to use for each individual reference (LaTeX;
       others?)
     - a multi-cite command to apply to all references together
       (LaTeX)
     - CSS or other styling class (HTML and derived backends; also
       ODT?)
     - properties describing how to treat emphasis and other
       formatting that cannot appear in plain text (ASCII and other
       plain text backends)

In addition to the syntax of citations themselves, the Org document
would also need to represent the following metadata to support
citations:
  7) [@7] a pointer to one or more backend reference databases,
     including in-document databases in org-bibtex format
  8) a reference to a citation style or style file
  9) a reference to a locale file 
  10) an indication of where the bibliography should be found in the
      exported document (equivalent to \printbibliography, etc. in
      LaTeX)

I would like to know if others can think of anything else that should go
on this list.  I am particularly interested in hearing from people who
use (or want to use) citations with non-LaTeX export backends, since I
am least familiar with how citations work in those types of documents.

I have also been working on a proposal for citation syntax that I think
will meet these requirements, which I will post separately.

Best,
Richard