Org-cite: Replace basic follow-processor with transient menu?

Org-cite: Replace basic follow-processor with transient menu?

[Tor-björn Claesson]

Hello!

I recently switched from org-ref to org-cite, and would like to thank
eveyone who has worked on citation handling in org-mode!
Your work is of incredible value to my research productivity!

Since I use org-roam-ref, I initially went with citar and installed
vertico, marginalia and embark, but this felt a bit invasive,
so I went back to the built in basic processors,
which fill all my needs except for the follow-processor.

To improve following, I made a transient which offers options other than
opening the bibliography entry. This works really well, and can easily
be extended by adding new suffixes.

In order to make the basic follow processor more useful, would you be
interested in replacing it with a transient menu?

As an example, I attach my transient, including examples on extensions.
It would obviously need some work on wording and thought as to what
commands should be made available by default. Also I am not used to
elisp, and the code can probably be improved!

I hope that this example demonstrates how more useful and extensible
the basic citation follower would be in form of a transient menu,
and would be happy to work this into something fit for inclusion
in org-mode, in case you would be interested.

Best regards,
Tor-björn Claesson

(transient-define-prefix tbc/follow-reference (datum &optional _)
  "How should we follow references?"
  [["Open"
    ("b" "bibliography entry"
     (lambda ()
       (interactive)
       (org-cite-basic-goto
        (car  (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope))
        (cadr (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope)))))]
   ["Copy"
    ("c" "citation key"
     (lambda ()
       (interactive)
       (kill-new
        (org-element-property :key (car (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope))))))]]
  (interactive)
  (transient-setup 'tbc/follow-reference nil nil :scope (list 
                                                         datum
                                                         _)))
(org-cite-register-processor 'tbc
  :follow #'tbc/follow-reference)
(setq org-cite-follow-processor 'tbc)

(transient-append-suffix 'tbc/follow-reference "b"
  '("p" "pdf"
    (lambda ()
      (interactive)
      (find-file-other-window
       (concat
        tbc/projektet ; path to my research files
        "Referensartiklar/"
        (org-element-property :key (car (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope)))
        ".pdf")))))

(transient-append-suffix 'tbc/follow-reference "p"
  '("n" "note"
    (lambda ()
      (interactive)
      (orb-edit-note
       (org-element-property
        :key (car  (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope)))))))

;; Adapted from org-ref
(transient-append-suffix 'tbc/follow-reference "c"
  '("d" "DOI"
     (lambda ()
       (interactive)
       (kill-new 
        (save-excursion 
          (with-temp-buffer
            (mapc #'insert-file-contents org-cite-global-bibliography)
            (bibtex-set-dialect (parsebib-find-bibtex-dialect) t)
            (bibtex-search-entry (org-element-property :key (car (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope))))
            (setq doi (bibtex-autokey-get-field "doi"))
            (replace-regexp-in-string "^http://dx.doi.org/" "" doi)))))))

Re: Org-cite: Replace basic follow-processor with transient menu?

[Ihor Radchenko]

Tor-björn Claesson <tclaesson@gmail.com> writes:

> Since I use org-roam-ref, I initially went with citar and installed
> vertico, marginalia and embark, but this felt a bit invasive,
> so I went back to the built in basic processors,
> which fill all my needs except for the follow-processor.
>
> To improve following, I made a transient which offers options other than
> opening the bibliography entry. This works really well, and can easily
> be extended by adding new suffixes.
>
> In order to make the basic follow processor more useful, would you be
> interested in replacing it with a transient menu?

I do think that having extended menus for org-open-at-point could be
useful. Not by default, but, for example, with a prefix argument.

> As an example, I attach my transient, including examples on extensions.
> It would obviously need some work on wording and thought as to what
> commands should be made available by default. Also I am not used to
> elisp, and the code can probably be improved!

Your example demonstrates the following options:
1. Plain old opening bibtex entry
2. Copying citation key
3. Opening DOI-derived link in browser
4. Opening PDF (but I am not sure how you want to find the PDF name from
   bibtex record)

I am not sure how useful is copying the citation key, but various extra
menus like opening DOI/ISBN/URL links might be of use.
PDFs might be useful, but it is not clear how to know where such PDF is
located for arbitrary user.

Any other suggestions?
Maybe from
https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref/blob/fd178abf12a85f8e12005d1df683564bdc534124/org-ref-citation-links.el#L525 ?

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Org-cite: Replace basic follow-processor with transient menu?

[Tor-björn Claesson]

Hi and thanks for replying!

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:
>
> I do think that having extended menus for org-open-at-point could be
> useful. Not by default, but, for example, with a prefix argument.
>

This is a good point, but of much larger scope than just replacing the
follower of the basic citation-processor.

>
> Your example demonstrates the following options:
> 1. Plain old opening bibtex entry
> 2. Copying citation key
> 3. Opening DOI-derived link in browser
> 4. Opening PDF (but I am not sure how you want to find the PDF name from
>    bibtex record)
>
> I am not sure how useful is copying the citation key, but various extra
> menus like opening DOI/ISBN/URL links might be of use.
> PDFs might be useful, but it is not clear how to know where such PDF is
> located for arbitrary user.
>
> Any other suggestions?
> Maybe from
> https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref/blob/fd178abf12a85f8e12005d1df683564bdc534124/org-ref-citation-links.el#L525 ?

Notes and PDF depends heavily on user preferences - and should maybe be
left out for now? org-ref allows customizing org-ref-open-pdf-function,
with a default one using bibtex-completion-find-pdf, which finds a pdf in
bibtex-completion-library-path called citekey with one of the extension
listed in bibtex-completion-pdf-extension.

Maybe it is a good idea to start small, for example provide
1. Open bibtex-entry
2. Copy DOI
3. Opening DOI/ISBN/URL links in browser

Further functionality can easily be added per user, and good solutions
incorporated by default in the future?

I have played some more with this - would it be a good idea to include
macros to get citekey, datum and _? I would be happy to clean this up a
bit, add DOI/ISBN/URL-functionality, documentation and prepare a bug report/patch.

(defmacro org-cite-basic-follow--citekey ()
  '(org-element-property :key (car (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope))))

(defmacro org-cite-basic-follow--datum ()
  '(car  (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope)))

(defmacro org-cite-basic-follow--_ ()
  '(cadr (oref (transient-prefix-object) scope)))

(transient-define-prefix org-cite-basic-follow (datum _)
  "How should we follow references?"
  [["Open"
    ("b" "bibliography entry"
     (lambda ()
       (interactive)
       (org-cite-basic-goto
        (org-cite-basic-follow--datum)
        (org-cite-basic-follow--_))))]
   ["Copy"
    ("d" "DOI"
     (lambda ()
       (interactive)
       (kill-new
        (save-excursion
          (with-temp-buffer
            (mapc #'insert-file-contents org-cite-global-bibliography)
            (bibtex-set-dialect (parsebib-find-bibtex-dialect) t)
            (bibtex-search-entry (org-cite-basic-follow--citekey))
            (setq doi (bibtex-autokey-get-field "doi"))
            (replace-regexp-in-string "^http://dx.doi.org/" "" doi))))))]]
  (interactive)
  (transient-setup 'org-cite-basic-follow nil nil :scope (list 
                                                         datum
                                                         _)))

Best regards,
Tor-björn Claesson