Hi everyone,

Since discussion seems to have petered out on the previous thread (see:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/94524), I took some time to
go back over the discussion and write up a concrete proposal for
citation syntax.

This proposal represents my attempt to formulate a syntax that is easy
to read, easy to parse, and covers all the use-cases that people
mentioned as being important.  It is surely not perfect, but I learned a
lot from the previous thread, and I hope something like this will serve
the community's needs.

The proposal is below, both inline (for easy quoting) and attached (for
easy reading).  To keep it relatively short, I have mostly not explained
my reasoning for the choices I made, but I am happy to do so here if
anyone has questions.

I welcome feedback, comments, criticisms, and objections on any point.
However, since we've already had a long discussion about this, I
respectfully request that we try to keep this thread focused.  To that
end, I suggest:

  1) If you have criticisms or objections, please try to indicate
     whether you think they are `substantive' (e.g., you see a problem
     that would prevent you from using this syntax, or prevent Org from
     implementing it) or not (e.g., you would prefer a slightly
     different but equivalent way of expressing something).

  2) If you wish to express an opinion about the proposal without
     offering further comments, let us know by just replying with +1
     (meaning you'd like to see this syntax, or something reasonably
     similar to it, be adopted), 0, or -1 (meaning you'd prefer not to
     see this syntax or anything similar to it adopted).

I guess this is my Valentine to the Org community. :) Thanks for reading!

Best,
Richard