Re: Citation syntax and ODT

[Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>]

Hi Vaidheeswaran,

Thanks for your input about citations!

Vaidheeswaran <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> writes:

> Those working on the citation syntax should make it clear that the
> "lowest common" cite syntax does NOT also IMPOSE (or GUARANTEE) a
> specific style on the produced document.
>
> When I say this, I specifically mean:
>
> 1. I want my citation and references to be carried over FAITHFULLY to
>    the exported document.
>
> 2. I DON'T CARE how (1) is styled.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand your concern here.  What does it
mean to export a citation faithfully, but without imposing a particular
style (or without giving it any specific formatting properties)?

My understanding (based on the LaTeX world) is that a `style' defines a
broad set of conventions for formatting citations and bibliographies in
the output document.  For example, a style might define citations to be
author-year, or numerical.  Within a style, individual citations can
still have different formatting properties, such as whether it appears
inside parentheses or not.

We haven't really discussed how styles should be specified (yet), or the
formatting of bibliographies.  But we have been discussing a syntax that
lets you specify those formatting properties which commonly differ
between individual citations.

> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The above observations would translate to:
>
> The Cite object in it's SIMPLEST form specifies just a citekey (or a
> set of citekeys). The Cite-object is qualified with a footnote saying
> that any key-value pair -- including "type" -- that is specified with
> Cite object MAY BE IGNORED by a backend.
>

If I understand what you're saying here correctly, I think this is too
little to expect.  If *all* the formatting information in a citation can
be ignored by any backend, there isn't very much to be gained by having
a citation syntax in Org.

> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Note that I am not speaking against Bells and Whistles.  I am only
> saying that Bells and Whistles MUST NOT be imposed upon a backend like
> ODT where the available tools are NOT AS RICH OR AS MATURE AS that
> available with other backends like HTML or LaTeX.

I don't really know anything about ODT.  In particular, I don't know if
ODT makes room for a distinction between the overall citation style and
the formatting properties of individual citations.  Can you say a bit
more about what you think its limitations are?

Obviously, we can't impose anything on the formatting of citations which
the output document format is incapable of expressing.  But I can't
think of anything we've discussed for the main syntax that seems likely
to be inexpressible in ODT.

Have you had a chance to read the proposal that I sent around last
weekend?  Are there specific features of the main syntax described there
(ignoring the `%%(...)' part, which it now appears will be dropped) that
you don't think ODT or other backends can support?  If so, I think that
is a concern, and should be discussed.

Best,
Richard