Re: wip-cite status question and feedback

[Richard Lawrence]

Hi all,

Nice to see this issue being discussed again!

I don't have a lot to add and at the moment I don't have a lot of time
to contribute, but I wanted to make one point about this issue:

Joost Kremers <address@hidden> writes:

> 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 came up in the discussion in 2015, too. So maybe this can help
avoid repeating a long discussion about this:

I think it is worth pointing out to Bib(La)TeX users that it is useful
to avoid a proliferation of citation commands in Org syntax. The syntax
discussed so far achieves this by "factoring out" formatting information
that BibLaTeX puts into the command into other parts of the syntax and
into the choice of citation stylesheet. For example, instead of having
\footnotecite and \parencite as separate commands, you can just have a
single cite command, and the choice of stylesheet determines whether
citations get formatted as footnotes or as in-text parenthetical
citations or as something else.

This obviously has the drawback that if you only have single citation
command, you only get to make the choice about formatting once for the
whole document (via the stylesheet). So, I think the relevant question
is: how many different basic citation types are needed *within a single
document*, keeping in mind that these basic types will be formatted in
different ways, depending on the choice of stylesheet?

My experience is that it's typically just two (e.g. parenthetical and
author-in-text), and my memory of the earlier conversation was that most
people agreed. This is also borne out in the Pandoc syntax. As long as
we have two basic types of citations, the finer points of formatting
them can be achieved via other syntax, including the choice of
stylesheet.

-- 
Best,
Richard