Re: wip-cite status question and feedback

["Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com>]

Sorry for the typos, and also a more important mistake: a didn't mean
citeproc-hs, but citeproc-rs.

https://github.com/cormacrelf/citeproc-rs

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 2:27 PM Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you for this thorough reply, Nicholas!
>
> See below.
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 1:51 PM Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > "Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > Hi everyone; first post.
> >
> > Welcome!
> >
> > > I see from the archive there was an encouraging thread from April of 2018
> > > <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2018-04/msg00336.html>
> > > (so, two years ago) that seemed to suggest merging to master was close,
> > > with perhaps some uncertainty around syntax being the primary hold up?
> > >
> > > My main question: how do we get this done?
> >
> > Good question. I don't think syntax is the primary hold up. It seems to
> > me that the glue part between the parser and the export back-ends is
> > missing. If we merge wip-cite branch in master, where do we plug it? How
> > do Org folks use it, out of the box? It also need tooling. For example,
> > citations could be a link to a database.
>
> OK, gotcha. That does explain the "hold up."
>
> I'll come back to this below, but for now simply say that ideal would
> probably be a default formatting library and database, with room to
> replace with other options.
>
> For the database, it would make to do as existing tools do; allow
> users to define default bib(la)tex files.
>
> [snip]
>
> > Actually, barring the "cite:" prefix, you can use the exact same syntax
> > as Pandoc, i.e.:
> >
> >   [cite:see @doe99, pp. 33-35; also @smith04, chap. 1]
> >   [cite:@doe99, pp. 33-35, 38-39 and *passim*]
> >   [cite:@smith04; @doe99]
> >
> > Only the semicolon is meaningful in there, not the commas. Also, for
> > readability, spacing after the "cite:" prefix is ignored, so one can
> > write, e.g.,
> >
> >   [cite: see @doe99, pp. 33-35; also @smith04, chap. 1]
>
> OK, that's good.
>
> Note that in CSL processors, the locators are meaningful key-values,
> basically; not plain text strings.
>
> This is because different citation styles have different requirements
> for rendering them.
>
> Description from the spec:
>
> a cite-specific pinpointer within the item (e.g. a page number within
> a book, or a volume in a multi-volume work). Must be accompanied in
> the input data by a label indicating the locator type (see the
> Locators term list), which determines which term is rendered by
> cs:label when the “locator” variable is selected.
>
> And this is the list of CSL locators keys:
>
> http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#locators
>
> > > Or the first one might treat the “see” as a prefix for the list, though I’m
> > > not sure what the practical benefit of that more hierarchical modelling is.
> >
> > No, IIRC, the common prefix is the part before the first semicolon, but
> > only if that part contains no citation key. IOW, in the example above,
> > "see " is the prefix of the first citation reference, not a global
> > prefix.
> >
> > > While I do wonder if the syntax could be simplified, my main hope is that
> > > it actually gets merged to master and deployed, to harmonize the variety of
> > > different ways emacs tools (org-ref, ebib, pandoc, etc.) are dealing with
> > > citation links in org currently.
> >
> > If the syntax is practical, we could merge it, yes. Maybe that's the way
> > forward, after all. But then? What library is going to use it?
> >
> > Org Ref is well established and is unlikely to switch to the new syntax.
> > It would be nice if both syntax could converge at some point, though.
> > The point of the new syntax is to make it easier for this kind of
> > extension.
>
> While I of course can't speak for John, I would hope and expect org
> ref to support the new syntax.
>
> I would hope and expect the same of other packages (like ebib) that
> use their own custom syntax.
>
> > "citeproc-el" is not included in Emacs, so integrating "citeproc-org" in
> > Org may not be helpful at this point. Since Org is bundled with Emacs,
> > it cannot use external libraries.
>
> I hadn't considered that.
>
> I'm thinking two options:
>
> 1. just have a super simple citation export formatter, with (per
> above) room to configure an external one
>
> 2. while I don't know its status, include citeproc-org in org and emacs
>
> I'd say if citeproc-org is far along and free of substantial bugs, 2
> might make sense. I am, of course, biased, but CSL's been widely
> deployed in the wild for more than a decade, and there are thousands
> of available styles.
>
> Otherwise, and more likely, 1 would be the best path; users get basic
> output formatting for citations, but then can plug in more elaborate
> tools (citeproc-org, citeproc-hs*, etc.) if they need them.
>
> Obviously, if a user is exporting to LaTeX, the formatting is
> straightforward, because you're just exporting to the latex cite code,
> as pandoc does (though it also has an option to use citeproc to
> produce "cooked" formatted output in latex).
>
> For HTML, the output doesn't need to be anything fancy.
>
> So the #1 path is the more iterative approach to implementing the functionality.
>
> WDY about that?
>
> Bruce
>
> * citeproc-hs is a newer effort, funded by zotero, to create a very
> high performance, fully compliant, CSL implementation, that is easy to
> embed and use pretty much anywhere; I haven't checked on the status
> recently, but I'm optimistic this will be the best option long-term
>
> Bruce