Re: org-cite: make 'suppress-author' a citation 'style'

[Richard Lawrence]

Hi all,

"Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com> writes:

>> We introduced :suppress-author because someone requested it at some
>> point. I don't remember who, but it may be worth asking that person.
>>
>
> I did some quick searching.
>
> Wow; this goes back a long time!
>
> Anyway, Richard Lawrence summarized previous discussions, which includes
> this detail, in this 2015 post:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2015-02/msg00932.html
>
> Not sure if he introduced the idea or not, but if not, he should know.

I don't remember exactly anymore, and a quick search does not turn up
the source, but I can say in general that the concern back then was to
make the citation syntax at least as flexible as the BibLaTeX citation
commands, to support users who currently use BibLaTeX (and don't have
much interest in non-LaTeX output).

> I think there are two points to consider before removing suppress-author
>> syntax:
>>
>> 1. does it make sense to apply it independently on references within
>>    a full citation?

I don't remember what my thinking was exactly, but it was probably
something like this: (a) we need citations with multiple references; (b)
in some such citations we may need to suppress the author of some
references without suppressing the author of others; (c) thus
:suppress-author must be a reference-level property, not a property of
the whole citation object and (d) uniformity demands that every
reference should have it (even if it doesn't make sense in practice to
apply it to references in the middle of the list).

That said, here is a possible use case for this: suppose you are
referencing multiple works from a given author and want to avoid
printing the author's name multiple times, but also want to include a
further reference to a work by another author:

e.g. you can write

Smith claims foo [(cite): -@Smith2019; -@Smith2020; see also @Jones2018].

to render

Smith claims foo (2019; 2020; see also Jones 2018).

Does that help?

-- 
Best,
Richard