Re: wip-cite status question and feedback

[Joost Kremers]

On Mon, Apr 13 2020, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> > What about allowing something more verbose? Perhaps
> > "cite-intext:" or "cite:intext:"?
[...]
> > The simple syntax is great for most cases, but if you want to 
> > support
> > some of those not so common biblatex commands, this might be 
> > better.
>
> Alphanumeric suffix provides 62 combinations, which should 
> hopefully be
> enough for any citation back-end out there (I'm looking at you
> biblatex). It's not terribly readable, tho, as you point out.

62 combinations might sound like a lot, but if you want your cite 
commands to be mnemonic, you'll run out of options much more 
quickly.

> This is a conciseness versus readability problem, not a 
> technical one,
> as long as we do not allow too much, from a parser point of 
> view.
>
> I have no strong opinion on the topic. It would be more valuable 
> to hear
> from actual citations users. What would they prefer?

Not sure if my opinion counts, given that I mainly use LaTeX + 
biblatex to write my texts, but I would definitely allow more than 
one character. The more common commands (=citep=, =citet=) can 
still use a single character (and thus remain concise), but for 
less common commands, the ability to have more descriptive names 
is to be preferred. Imagine looking at a document you wrote a few 
years back and having to figure out what =citeQ= or =cite7= was 
meant for again, or finding that =citeF= was changed from 
=\fullcite= to =\footfullcite= because at some point the 
developers figured the latter would be used more often.

I don't think it's necessary to use a dash (or any other 
character) in longer cite commands, though. =citeintext= isn't 
that much more difficult to read than =cite-intext=. (Biblatex 
does just fine without dashes, and there's always camelCase if 
you're so inclined.)

> > 1. For the bibliography:
> >
> > #+bibliography: something.bib
> > (Could this be a list containing multiple files?)
>
> Multiple keywords may be more appropriate, particularly if you 
> need to
> spell out absolute file names.
>
> Org can provide a function listing all of them anyway.

Yes, and please make it a public (one-dash) function. :-)

> > 2. Placing the bibliography with:
> >
> > #+bibliography: here
> > (Ideally, it would be possible to have this multiple times, 
> > perhaps
> > with some filters, like printing only the works of a certain 
> > author,
> > or with certain keywords, or so. But that's, of course 
> > something for
> > later...)
>
> It is smart, but I'm not sure I like using the same keyword for 
> two
> different things. OTOH, I don't have a better idea.

As someone already suggested, using something like 
=#+printbibliography:= would work. And if that is too 
biblatex-like, you could instead opt for e.g. 
=#+list-of-references:=. (Output formats such as HTML or epub 
don't involve any printing anyway, so... ;-)


--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments