> > I am not yet convinced a citation processor will get us where we want
> > because of the complexity of the external dependencies, and the
> > potential/probable need for us to define new CSL files for different
> > backends, or at a minimum for org-formatted citations and
> > bibliographies. Hacking bst files is no fun, and it doesn't look like
> > CSL files are much better! Plus you have to find them and install them
> > somehow.
>
> As I understand it, we would not need to hack the CSL files to get org
> markup. With a good processor, such as citeproc-js, it should be trivial
> to modify the output format.[fn:1]
>

This is good. It still means adding each output somewhere.


>
> What CSL implementations do offer is the complexity to handle all the
> nuances of multiple citation styles, languages, etc. (e.g., something
> like Chicago Manual of Style footnotes). My suspicion is that it would
> take years to code something in emacs-lisp that offers all of the
> functionality of CSL processors.
>

That sounds right. bibtex was developed for a long time, and there are
still efforts to improve it!


>
> >
> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2015/12/03/Exporting-numbered-citations-in-html-with-unsorted-numbered-bibliography/
> >
> > I am pointing this out because I think the approach I used could allow
> > for plugins for different database backends, different ways to get the
> > replacements, etc... you could substitute org-ref links for the
> > citation syntax at some point with no real loss of generality. org-ref
> > could insert the new syntax as soon as it is available in a main org
> > branch. Some code will have to be rewritten to get the key under
> > point, but that probably won't be too hard.
>
> Thanks for sharing this. I use something like this myself for *basic*
> Chicago Manual of Style formatting when I can't rely on
> biblatex-chicago. Might I ask: What is org-ref syntax as opposed to
> citation syntax?
>

org-ref syntax for a citation is just a link such as
cite:some-key,another-key, All the cite types in bibtex and biblatex have a
link definition. Here is an example document with a citation with pre and
post text. A limitation is you can only currently put pre/post text on a
single citation.

Org-mode is great [[cite:Dominik201408][See page 20::for example]].

bibliographystyle:unsrt
bibliography:~/Dropbox/bibliography/references.bib

This exports to LaTeX as

\cite[See page 20][for example]{Dominik201408}.

\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{/Users/jkitchin/Dropbox/bibliography/references}

I looked at an alternative syntax for pre/post text a year ago, but there
doesn't seem to be much demand for it, and we don't use pre/post text.
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2014/06/26/Another-parsing-of-links-for-citations-with-pre-and-post-text/

 org-ref also provides links for labels, cross-references, index entries
and glossaries, and mostly supports biblatex too. See
https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref/blob/master/org-ref.org for a pretty
good intro to it.


>
> >  Then other more advanced solutions could come along that would likely
> > be superior in output quality if they use real citation processors,
> > but only if there are CSLs for different backends (if I understand how
> > they work).
>
> I don't think modifying CSL styles would be necessary. A huge number
> already exist.[fn:2] I think all we would need to do is to convert the
> final CSL output to org syntax, which pandoc can already do and which
> citeproc-js could do with minor additions.
>
> Best,
> Matt
>
> Footnotes:
>
> [fn:1]
> See
> https://bitbucket.org/fbennett/citeproc-js/src/tip/src/formats.js?fileviewer=file-view-default
>
> [fn:2] https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles
>