Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Leszek Wroński]

Guys,

I've been using Emacs for about 20 years, but I'm only now starting to
seriously explore the Org-mode, since I read about the new citation
options. I'd like to report my initial experience since maybe this
could lead to some amendments to the manual?

Anyway: I installed Org 9.5 from Melpa in Emacs 27.1. I proceeded
through the 'Installation' part in the online manual, so the only
things I put into .emacs were the rudimentary keybindings. I then
switched to the 15.1 Citations chapter and created a file the first
line of which pointed to my library.bib. The introduction to chapter
15 says 'The included “basic” processor provides all four
capabilities.' (w.r.t. 'activate', 'follow', 'insert', 'export'). I
thus assumed that the basic processor was included. However,
org-cite-insert ended with 'Unknown processor basic'.

After reading the list I put "(use-package oc-basic)" in my .emacs.
Since then I can get the citations to appear in my org file. So that's
one thing that could be helpful to new users: even though the citation
processors are included, you have to manually enable them in the
.emacs, e.g. using use-package. [If I'm wrong, please correct me, I'm
new to this and I'm trying to help.]

Another thing: the way the citations work is inconsistent for me at
this point. In some cases, a click on a citation opens my library.bib
at the relevant entry. In other cases, nothing happens (i.e. nothing
that I can see.) On what could this depend?

Ideally I'd like a click on a citation to open the PDF whose location
is stored in the 'file' field of the .bib entry: is there an easy way
to achieve this? [I've tried various ways of doing this in the last
10+ years, including org-ref, RefTex etc., but am I correct in
assuming that currently the idea is that one should only use the
Org-mode for such things?]

Thanks to everyone involved for their hard work!

Best regards,

Leszek Wronski

Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Bruce D'Arcus]

Forgot to reply-all ...

On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 11:36 AM Leszek Wroński <elwro1@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been using Emacs for about 20 years, but I'm only now starting to
> seriously explore the Org-mode, since I read about the new citation
> options. I'd like to report my initial experience since maybe this
> could lead to some amendments to the manual?

Your suggestions make a lot of sense.

> Another thing: the way the citations work is inconsistent for me at
> this point. In some cases, a click on a citation opens my library.bib
> at the relevant entry. In other cases, nothing happens (i.e. nothing
> that I can see.) On what could this depend?

I don't know. Is the key by chance wrong?

> Ideally I'd like a click on a citation to open the PDF whose location
> is stored in the 'file' field of the .bib entry: is there an easy way
> to achieve this? [I've tried various ways of doing this in the last
> 10+ years, including org-ref, RefTex etc., but am I correct in
> assuming that currently the idea is that one should only use the
> Org-mode for such things?]

As for the "follow" functionality you're asking about, this is mostly
what third party processors are for; "oc-basic" is intentionally
"basic".

This landscape is still new, but my oc-bibtex-actions one allows you,
for example, to use embark to run different actions from an org-cite
citation. By default it will open associated documents or links.

https://github.com/bdarcus/bibtex-actions

John Kitchin's org-ref-cite does similar with a hydra menu, though I'm
unsure of his plans for the package.

https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref-cite

Bruce

Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Leszek Wroński]

Thank you very much! I will explore more. The keys are correct. On
reopening the .org file, the behavior is now consistent: clicking on
any citation does nothing :-) I will try to experiment with your
processor. I did manage to configure org-ref-cite to open PDFs a few
months ago, but when trying to combine it with org-roam and helm I
managed to screw up my configuration and so I'm now starting from
scratch more carefully.

Best regards,

Leszek.

On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 at 19:00, Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Forgot to reply-all ...
>
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 11:36 AM Leszek Wroński <elwro1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I've been using Emacs for about 20 years, but I'm only now starting to
> > seriously explore the Org-mode, since I read about the new citation
> > options. I'd like to report my initial experience since maybe this
> > could lead to some amendments to the manual?
>
> Your suggestions make a lot of sense.
>
> > Another thing: the way the citations work is inconsistent for me at
> > this point. In some cases, a click on a citation opens my library.bib
> > at the relevant entry. In other cases, nothing happens (i.e. nothing
> > that I can see.) On what could this depend?
>
> I don't know. Is the key by chance wrong?
>
> > Ideally I'd like a click on a citation to open the PDF whose location
> > is stored in the 'file' field of the .bib entry: is there an easy way
> > to achieve this? [I've tried various ways of doing this in the last
> > 10+ years, including org-ref, RefTex etc., but am I correct in
> > assuming that currently the idea is that one should only use the
> > Org-mode for such things?]
>
> As for the "follow" functionality you're asking about, this is mostly
> what third party processors are for; "oc-basic" is intentionally
> "basic".
>
> This landscape is still new, but my oc-bibtex-actions one allows you,
> for example, to use embark to run different actions from an org-cite
> citation. By default it will open associated documents or links.
>
> https://github.com/bdarcus/bibtex-actions
>
> John Kitchin's org-ref-cite does similar with a hydra menu, though I'm
> unsure of his plans for the package.
>
> https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref-cite
>
> Bruce

Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Bruce D'Arcus]

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On Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 1:41 PM Leszek Wroński <elwro1@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you very much! I will explore more. The keys are correct. On
> reopening the .org file, the behavior is now consistent: clicking on
> any citation does nothing :-)


Try org-open-at-point. That at least should work.

Bruce

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Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[M. ‘quintus’ Gülker]

Am Mittwoch, dem 13. Oktober 2021 schrieb Leszek Wroński:
> Ideally I'd like a click on a citation to open the PDF whose location
> is stored in the 'file' field of the .bib entry: is there an easy way
> to achieve this? [I've tried various ways of doing this in the last
> 10+ years, including org-ref, RefTex etc., but am I correct in
> assuming that currently the idea is that one should only use the
> Org-mode for such things?]

Maybe it helps you: I use ebib for managing my .bib files. While I have
not yet tried directly to jump from a citation key in an .org file to
the corresponding ebib entry, I suppose there is a way. In ebib then it
is as easy as pressing “f” to open the PDF referenced in the “file”
field.

  -quintus

-- 
Dipl.-Jur. M. Gülker | https://mg.guelker.eu | PGP: Siehe Webseite
Passau, Deutschland  | kontakt@guelker.eu    | O<

Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Peter Neilson]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 11:33:16 -0400, Leszek Wroński <elwro1@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Guys,
>
> I've been using Emacs for about 20 years, but I'm only now starting to
> seriously explore the Org-mode, since I read about the new citation
> options. I'd like to report my initial experience since maybe this
> could lead to some amendments to the manual?

%snip%

Thank you for reporting. The "new user" experience can only be captured  
once, and it is all too common for the experienced user to omit "obvious"  
material from documentation. Some day I might go through all the org docs  
wearing my "new user" hat. I'm not a real new user (emacs since about  
1976, TECO before that) but my old-age forgetfulness might help.

Re: Manual suggestion and experience report from a new user (citation processors, 9.5)

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Leszek Wroński <elwro1@gmail.com> writes:

> Guys,

and gals!

> The introduction to chapter 15 says 'The included “basic” processor
> provides all four capabilities.' (w.r.t. 'activate', 'follow',
> 'insert', 'export'). I thus assumed that the basic processor was
> included. However, org-cite-insert ended with 'Unknown processor
> basic'.

This is rather unexpected. Your assumption is correct, oc-basic should
be available right from the start. I fixed it in bugfix branch.

Thank you.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou