From: Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>
To: Org Mode <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Citations, continued
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2015 10:09:14 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAN_Dec9vRfebPGJP3jzXzpektRj-i3k=OoAUFCFDLF9zNz2BFw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87vbjmn6wy.fsf@berkeley.edu>
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I have very little of substance to say, but many thanks to Richard for
raising the level of discourse to a much more sophisticated one than I was
able to achieve in my initial post.
I don't feel qualified to comment on whether links or a new citation syntax
is appropriate. But I do think that Richard and the rest of you have
identified the key features that any future syntax should follow. I guess
I would emphasize that Richard's insistence on the experience of a document
writer is very important -- it should be straightforward to add citations
from whatever sources we use, to read and work with those citations in org
itself, and to export them painlessly to the other major formats in which
our work is shared (I think the main ones right now and for the foreseeable
future are LaTex, ODT/Docx, and HTML). And that should be true even for
people who are not so good at fiddling with presentation details.
From my perspective, citation support is really the only writerly feature
"missing" from org; if it can be put in place, I will be thrilled and
thankful.
Finally, I did want to describe one other syntax I've recently learned
about, which is used by Zotero's odf-scan plugin (
http://zotero-odf-scan.github.io/zotero-odf-scan/); these are text
citations of this type:
{pre | -Author (Date) | p. XX | post | ZOTEROKEY }
The scanner will convert these to ODT citations, and multiple citations
strung together will be formatted as a multi-source citation.
I find these pretty easy to read, though there is certainly room for
improvement.
On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Richard Lawrence <
richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I wanted to continue the discussion that began in this thread about
> adding citation support to Org:
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/94352/focus=94412
>
> Here are some thoughts I have after reviewing that discussion:
>
> 1) Lots of people seem to need/want better support for citations in Org
> documents. Other projects (Pandoc among them) already have support for
> citations which is good enough that at least some people are using them
> to fill this perceived gap in Org's support.
>
> 2) There are at least several different backend reference database
> formats (BibTeX, Zotero, etc.) used by Orgsters. Not all such databases
> use human-readable keys. Org also has a nice internal format for
> storing reference information: org-bibtex.
>
> 3) There are also several different frontend solutions for making
> citations in Org documents (org-ref, various `home-brewed' solutions,
> raw LaTeX \cite commands, etc.). The variety here is at least in part
> due to our different requirements for the format of exported documents:
> e.g., some people only care about exporting to LaTeX, others need
> something that will work for HTML or ODT; some people need to specify
> pre- and post-text for citations; some people need to specify citation
> types.
>
> 4) Because individual Orgsters have widely varying needs, there is some
> disagreement about what `proper' citation support should look like. (Do
> we need new syntax, or can existing syntax be used? Which features need
> to be supported by Org, and which can be provided by external tools?
> etc.)
>
> It seems there are three distinct but related problems:
> - representing citations in Org documents
> - exporting citations in an Org document to a backend document format
> like LaTeX, ODT, or HTML
> - searching for and manipulating keys in a reference database from
> within Org, and otherwise fostering good communication between
> such a database and citations in Org documents
>
> Here's my personal opinion about how we might solve them.
>
> As for the first problem, I think a good case can be made for adding new
> syntax to Org to represent citations, instead of repurposing/extending
> existing syntax (most notably, the link syntax).
>
> Here's why. Citations are complicated, and it's clear that some sort of
> new syntax is needed to represent them. Even link-based solutions
> introduce new syntax `inside' the link syntax, such as using `::' to
> separate pre-text and post-text in a link description, as org-ref does.
> Thus, the issue is not *whether* there should be additional syntax, but
> just *how constrained* it should be. In particular, the question is
> whether we want to make citation syntax a subset of link syntax, or
> whether citations and links should be distinct types of syntactic
> elements.
>
> It seems to me that the needs of citation users are wide enough and
> complicated enough that it is worth shedding the constraints imposed by
> the link syntax. Eventually, packing all the representations we need
> for a general solution (citation type, pre- and post-text, suppressing
> author name, etc. etc.) into the link syntax will tend to make citations
> unreadable.
>
> Moreover, citations are not really links, even though it is often useful
> to treat them (or parts of them) as links. For example, a link can only
> point to one target; yet a single citation often points to multiple
> sources. And what if you need different pre- or post-text for different
> sources within the same citation, like ``See @Doe1999 for an overview; a
> more extensive discussion is in @Foobar2000''?
>
> Finally, it seems to me that Org strives to be a document format which
> is usable independently of any particular export format. This counts in
> favor of having citation syntax as a first-class citizen in Org; at
> present, Org documents can only contain citations through a combination
> of extensions and external tools.
>
> For these reasons, I would support a separate citation syntax, but one
> that can behave like a link when useful. For example, suppose we
> borrowed the Pandoc [ ... @key1 ...; ... @key2 ...] syntax. When point
> is on `@key1', C-c C-o could be bound to find the key in the reference
> database, or another useful action, depending on the reference database
> format.
>
> As I mentioned in the earlier thread, I think the Pandoc syntax is a
> good place to start, and I think it would be valuable to have the two
> syntaxes be compatible. But even Pandoc's citation syntax might not be
> general enough to satisfy everyone's needs, so the first step for
> introducing citation syntax to Org should be compiling a list of all the
> things such a syntax should represent.
>
> The other problems, I think, must wait until a stable citation syntax
> emerges -- export support in particular. (Using an existing syntax from
> another project could help ease the transition here: if people can
> export citations using an existing tool, they'll be able to switch to
> that syntax immediately, and use the external tool in the meantime while
> Org-internal support for it catches up.)
>
> I hope this is a useful starting point for further discussion!
>
> Best,
> Richard
>
>
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-02-02 15:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 104+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-01-31 18:26 Citations, continued Richard Lawrence
2015-01-31 18:42 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-01 22:07 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-02 13:52 ` Rasmus
2015-02-02 17:25 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-02 18:09 ` Rasmus
2015-02-02 15:45 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-01 22:06 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-02 1:41 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-02 4:43 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-02 13:56 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-02 18:11 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-02 19:38 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-02 19:51 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-02 22:47 ` Rasmus
2015-02-03 0:54 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-03 1:36 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-02 14:17 ` Rasmus
2015-02-02 16:58 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-02 14:07 ` Rasmus
2015-02-02 13:51 ` Rasmus
2015-02-02 15:09 ` Matt Price [this message]
2015-02-02 18:02 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-02 19:55 ` Rasmus
2015-02-03 1:56 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-03 2:08 ` Vikas Rawal
2015-02-03 10:55 ` Rasmus
2015-02-04 10:35 ` Julian M. Burgos
2015-02-04 16:34 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-03 10:35 ` Rasmus
2015-02-03 12:00 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-03 16:27 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-03 17:25 ` Eric S Fraga
2015-02-03 3:58 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-03 4:41 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-03 7:30 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-03 16:11 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-04 6:30 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-04 12:06 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-04 16:45 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-06 10:27 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-06 22:41 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-07 22:43 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 2:46 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-08 9:46 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-08 17:09 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-08 22:23 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-09 8:46 ` e.fraga
2015-02-09 10:50 ` Rasmus
2015-02-09 11:20 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-09 11:37 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 9:06 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-09 15:09 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-10 8:55 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-10 9:22 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 9:41 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-10 10:01 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 15:32 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-10 1:50 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-09 17:46 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-09 20:13 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 1:32 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-10 4:04 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-10 5:23 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-10 6:20 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-08 9:58 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 17:18 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-08 18:18 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 9:28 ` Rasmus
2015-02-08 10:18 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 10:50 ` Rasmus
2015-02-08 12:36 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 13:40 ` Rasmus
2015-02-08 16:11 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-09 10:02 ` Rasmus
2015-02-08 17:02 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-08 17:29 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 1:54 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-10 8:49 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-10 9:20 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 10:05 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2015-02-10 10:36 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 10:53 ` Andreas Leha
2015-02-10 15:03 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-10 15:54 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 16:14 ` John Kitchin
2015-02-10 16:22 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-10 16:44 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-11 2:07 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-11 10:19 ` Stefan Nobis
2015-02-11 16:51 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-13 2:31 ` Matt Price
2015-02-11 10:47 ` Aaron Ecay
2015-02-11 11:32 ` Rasmus
2015-02-10 16:04 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-11 2:10 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-11 2:48 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-11 3:53 ` Thomas S. Dye
2015-02-06 23:37 ` Rasmus
2015-02-06 23:16 ` Rasmus
2015-02-04 17:44 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-04 15:59 ` Richard Lawrence
2015-02-04 17:58 ` Erik Hetzner
2015-02-04 19:24 ` Richard Lawrence
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