Re: Citations, continued

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

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Also, AFAIU, the syntax for valid citations is not defined explicitly so
> far. For example, I don't think it was discussed if any subset of Org
> objects (e.g., macros or bold text) is allowed in a citation.

This is a good question that, as you say, deserves more discussion.

I am not sure, but I am *thinking* that inline citations are objects
(not elements) that can contain some other objects.

Specifically I think we need the following categories, all of which
would be objects:
  - key
  - prefix / pre-text
  - suffix / post-text
  - locator
  - individual citation
  - bracketed citation
  - unbracketed citation

These should have a grammar like the following, based on my
(reverse-engineered) understanding of the Pandoc syntax for citations:

  - A bracketed citation is a list of one or more individual citations, 
    separated by ';' if there are two or more, and surrounded by '[' ']'
  - An individual citation is formatted like: PREFIX KEY LOCATOR SUFFIX
    The key is obligatory, and the prefix, locator and suffix
    are optional.
  - A key optionally begins with '-', and obligatorily contains '@'
    followed by a string of charcters which begins with a letter or '_',
    and may contain alphanumeric characters and the following internal
    punctuation characters:
       :.#$%&-+?<>~/
  - A prefix or suffix is a text object (that may contain markup like
    emphasis or macros)
  - An unbracketed citation consists of a key, optionally followed by a
    locator which is enclosed in '[' ']'
    
I am not sure about the syntax of locators.  In particular, I do not
know if they should allow internal markup, I do not know if they have an
internal syntax, and I do not know if a comma is required to separate
them from a key in a bracketed citation.

Best,
Richard