From: Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Citation syntax: a revised proposal
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 09:06:09 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87oaopx24e.fsf@berkeley.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 87twyjnh0r.fsf@nicolasgoaziou.fr
Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:
> I wasn't clear. Subtype should be interpreted by back-ends means it has
> no impact on syntax. However a user should be able to dictate what the
> back-end should do with it, much like `org-add-link-type'.
>
> A new library, e.g. "org-cite.el" would provide all the tools necessary
> to build custom handlers for subtypes. Thus, power users can do whatever
> they want with cite objects.
Ah, OK, I think I see...so this is basically the second option, with
users interpreting subtypes via a separate protocol, instead of via
filters. Right?
What about this concern, then?
>> But that kind of situation is exactly what the extra-info part
>> of the syntax is for; in that case,
>>
>> [cite/my-subtype: ...]
>>
>> would just be an exceptional way of writing
>>
>> [cite: ...]{:type my-subtype}
>>
>> or whatever. I'm not totally convinced yet that the convenience of the
>> former is worth blurring the line between `stuff that definitely works
>> on all backends' and `stuff that might not work on all backends'.
>> We have already seen a couple of examples in this thread of properties
>> that one might want to specify in a backend-agnostic way:
>> - special-case capitalization
>> - user-defined type/command/label/etc.
>>
>> Other things one might want to do include:
>> - indicating when a citation should be placed in a footnote
>> - extracting arbitrary bibliographic field(s)
>
> I disagree. These properties should be associated to the subtype.
> Having two places to set them is asking for trouble.
>
> IMO, there is little incentive to define a set of options for a single
> use. Creating a dedicated subtype /once/ makes more sense.
Hmm, OK. I agree in the abstract, but as far as I understand what a
`subtype' is, I am not sure how well that idea applies in this case. If
a subtype encompasses a set of options, and the only way to specify
those options is by specifying a subtype, then changing one option means
changing to a whole different subtype, even when you want all the other
options to stay the same. That will lead to a lot of duplication in
subtypes. That in turn could lead to a lot of author frustration: now I
have to remember exactly which subtype encompasses the set of options I
need for this particular citation.
Look at the LaTeX citation commands. There, you have a different
`type'/command for every possible combination of options, and there are
many commands because there are many options to deal with special cases.
In my mind, that is the wrong abstraction to emulate. You end up making
trips to the manual to figure out exactly which one you need.
To me, it makes much more sense to have a basic citation command, and
then a way to `answer some questions' to toggle various things related
to special-case behavior, like:
- should it be footnoted?
- should it have special-case capitalization?
- should it cite the volume?
- should it deal with brackets in a context-sensitive manner?
- should it use the genitive form of the author's name?
- ...
I would guess that the answers to these questions *usually* have nothing
to do with one another, so it makes sense to be able to answer them
independently, and change your answer to one independently of your
answers to the others. That's why I would want to be able to write
[cite: ...]{:footnoted t :capitalized t :author-title t ...}
rather than
[cite/footnoted-capitalized-author-title: ...]
In the former case, if I later figure out I don't need the `:capitalized
t' part, that's easy to remove without changing the other options. In
the latter case, I need to remember what name I gave to the subtype for
footnoted-but-not-capitalized-author-titles, or whatever.
I don't know; maybe this is not a very serious concern in practice.
Maybe, in practice, you generally only need one `special case' option at
a time, so the number of subtypes will be small. Still, I do not feel
comfortable declaring *in advance* that that is so; and the bewildering
array of LaTeX citation commands is at least some evidence that it
isn't. Thus, I am in favor of allowing the greater flexibility provided
by the former syntax.
That's not to say that subtypes never make sense: you are quite right
that sometimes options *should* be grouped together into a subtype,
namely, when it makes sense to set or remove them *conjointly*. But
that means the two syntaxes above actually have different purposes, even
though for some range of cases either one would do the job.
So although I would not be in favor of *only* allowing
[cite/subtype: ...]
I am basically OK with allowing this if we also allow the {:key val ...}
syntax. Still, the /subtype form is not needed if we also allow
[cite: ...]{:type subtype}
Best,
Richard
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-02-19 17:07 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 163+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-02-15 2:29 Citation syntax: a revised proposal Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 2:45 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 3:57 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-15 16:40 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 19:43 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-16 3:34 ` Matt Price
2015-02-16 8:56 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 9:57 ` Rasmus
2015-02-17 17:18 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-17 18:11 ` Rasmus
2015-02-18 0:44 ` Matt Price
2015-02-18 3:38 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 2:24 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-18 4:03 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 9:00 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-18 10:11 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-18 14:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-18 16:38 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-18 18:44 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 18:46 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 20:54 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-18 21:21 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-18 21:24 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-18 19:42 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-18 20:47 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-18 22:43 ` Rasmus
2015-02-18 22:35 ` Rasmus
2015-02-19 17:06 ` Richard Lawrence [this message]
2015-02-20 0:10 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-20 16:44 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-20 19:45 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-20 20:01 ` Rasmus
2015-02-20 22:33 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-21 11:58 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 17:25 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-27 0:56 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-27 8:55 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-27 9:56 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 3:12 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-21 12:00 ` Rasmus
2015-02-21 20:19 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-21 20:36 ` Samuel Wales
2015-02-25 13:59 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-25 16:57 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 22:37 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-26 5:10 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-01 20:35 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-01 21:31 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 0:24 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 8:57 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-03-02 1:37 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 9:23 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 19:11 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:15 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 3:14 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 5:33 ` Avram Lyon
2015-03-03 17:27 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 17:56 ` Avram Lyon
2015-03-04 16:41 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 9:24 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 9:39 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 14:12 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 18:50 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-02 20:14 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 20:34 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 22:17 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 22:33 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 22:45 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 23:05 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 23:27 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-02 23:42 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 2:48 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 8:43 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 16:59 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-04 0:43 ` Matt Price
2015-03-08 0:16 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 14:23 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 18:54 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:26 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 2:53 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 8:38 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-03 9:13 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 16:12 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-03 14:25 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 20:53 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 14:57 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-03 15:41 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 15:58 ` Ken Mankoff
2015-03-03 16:08 ` Rasmus
2015-03-03 17:13 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-10 3:44 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-10 9:49 ` Rasmus
2015-03-11 1:51 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-11 6:04 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-10 16:31 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-11 2:21 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-11 17:33 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-13 18:13 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 5:15 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 9:27 ` Andreas Leha
2015-03-17 16:26 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-17 20:42 ` Andreas Leha
2015-03-17 21:34 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-03-18 1:12 ` Matt Price
2015-03-18 15:19 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 18:08 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-26 21:30 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-26 23:50 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-27 8:49 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-27 16:35 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-27 10:09 ` Rasmus
2015-03-02 5:48 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 12:22 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-03-02 13:53 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-03-02 19:02 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-20 5:27 ` Melanie Bacou
2015-02-20 16:49 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-24 7:08 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-25 4:29 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-25 5:57 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-15 11:17 ` Tory S. Anderson
2015-02-15 11:57 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 17:05 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 8:53 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 17:52 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-15 17:23 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-03-09 10:40 ` Sebastien Vauban
2015-03-09 10:50 ` Vaidheeswaran C
2015-02-15 17:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 17:37 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 17:55 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:30 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-15 18:07 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-15 18:25 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:05 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-15 19:18 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 19:38 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-15 20:13 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-15 20:23 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 9:07 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 16:59 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 17:43 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 18:39 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 19:16 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-16 19:40 ` Rasmus
2015-02-15 20:49 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 16:18 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-16 18:21 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 12:05 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-16 13:10 ` William Denton
2015-02-16 13:42 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 16:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-16 17:28 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 18:49 ` Rasmus
2015-02-16 19:16 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-23 7:26 ` Vaidheeswaran
2015-02-16 16:35 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-16 17:56 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 18:24 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-16 18:39 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-16 19:19 ` Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo
2015-02-17 6:47 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-16 16:45 ` Richard Lawrence
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