Re: wip-cite status question and feedback

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Wed, Apr 15 2020, Richard Lawrence wrote:
>> 62 combinations might sound like a lot, but if you want your 
>> cite
>> commands to be mnemonic, you'll run out of options much more 
>> quickly.
[...]
> So, I think the relevant question
> is: how many different basic citation types are needed *within a 
> single
> document*, keeping in mind that these basic types will be 
> formatted in
> different ways, depending on the choice of stylesheet?
>
> My experience is that it's typically just two (e.g. 
> parenthetical and
> author-in-text), and my memory of the earlier conversation was 
> that most
> people agreed. This is also borne out in the Pandoc syntax. As 
> long as
> we have two basic types of citations, the finer points of 
> formatting
> them can be achieved via other syntax, including the choice of
> stylesheet.

Good points. I guess what this boils down to is whether Org wants 
to be like LaTeX, where simple things are doable and complicated 
things possible, or Pandoc, where simple things are simple indeed 
and complicated things essentially impossible.

To clarify: in LaTeX (biblatex) you can mix footnote and in-text 
citations in a single document, Pandoc doesn't allow that. 
Pandoc's functionality is sufficient for a great majority of 
cases, but if you want or need to go beyond it, things get very 
difficult.

My suggestion would still be not to hard-code a limit on possible 
citation commands. Org itself should probably just provide the 
basics, but users and add-on packages should be allowed to define 
more specific commands with readable names and there should be a 
well-defined interface for doing so (just like users and packages 
can add new link types, for example).

Just my €0.02, of course.

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments