From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Richard Lawrence Subject: Re: Citation processing via Zotero + zotxt Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2015 20:32:06 -0800 Message-ID: <87mvtsw3sp.fsf@berkeley.edu> References: <87wpt1yj5k.fsf@berkeley.edu> <87d1uqyiva.fsf@berkeley.edu> <8737vkidgl.fsf@fastmail.fm> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60008) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a4LYZ-000400-I9 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 02 Dec 2015 23:31:48 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a4LYW-0003yh-C7 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 02 Dec 2015 23:31:47 -0500 Received: from mail-pa0-x22f.google.com ([2607:f8b0:400e:c03::22f]:34180) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a4LYW-0003yV-4q for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 02 Dec 2015 23:31:44 -0500 Received: by padhx2 with SMTP id hx2so59921850pad.1 for ; Wed, 02 Dec 2015 20:31:43 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <8737vkidgl.fsf@fastmail.fm> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Matt Lundin Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Hi Matt and all, Matt Lundin writes: > Given these complexities, it seems that if we went the zotero route we > could end up with a fairly large installation chain (firefox, zotero, > zotxt, plugin for zotero). And this would require installing items from > multiple, heterogeneous sources. Well, I would guess that many people who are interested in this already have Firefox installed, and after that, you just need to install two Firefox plugins: Zotero and zotxt. Open a couple of links, give your permission, and that's it. If you're skeptical, I encourage you to try it: https://www.zotero.org/download/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zotxt/ It's pretty easy. And removing the plugins via about:addons is just as easy. > I wonder at this point whether pandoc-citeproc (packaged with pandoc) > would actually be the simpler route. It can parse bibtex files directly > and (as a filter within pandoc) can output formatted citations in org > format. We have discussed this before, and in fact, I already started work along this route: see https://github.com/wyleyr/org-citeproc I stopped because people objected that distributing a Haskell program is too difficult. Even if you can install pandoc-citeproc via your system's package manager, to build org-citeproc against it you need a complete Haskell build environment, which is (somewhat notoriously) difficult to work with, and too much to expect for the average person who just wants citation support in their Org documents. Nor has anyone volunteered to take care of building and distributing a binary for every platform we'd want to support (including, I assume, Windows and OS X...). > As a GNU/Linux user, I would find installing zotero and all the add-ons > messier and more cumbersome than installing pandoc and/or node-js (were > we to use citeproc-js) from the command line. I'm a Debian user, so I can appreciate your concern here. But it's only simpler to use the system package manager if all the dependencies are already packaged for $YOUR_DISTRO, in a version that's up-to-date enough for you to use. Given the diversity of Org users, it seems likely that we won't be able come up with a solution that goes via system package managers that will work for everybody, at least not without a lot of work. The nice thing about Firefox (and these days, Emacs) is that it's a sort of cross-platform package manager. If the citation processing dependencies are just Firefox plugins, they'll be much more accessible to a much wider group of people without a lot of work on our part. So, that's why I'd prefer depending on Zotero to depending on something like org-citeproc or citeproc-node. Best, Richard