Re: citations: org-cite vs org-ref 3.0

["Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2022 at 8:52 AM Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 23/03/2022 00:20, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 10:42 AM Max Nikulin wrote:
> >>
> >> John Kitchin, this thread, Sun, 20 Mar 2022 20:31:29 -0400.
> >> https://list.orgmode.org/m2sfrc149c.fsf@andrew.cmu.edu:
> >>
> >>> I don't know the equivalent of \citenum in CSL.
> >
> > Right; so John or someone else should send a message to the list
> > requesting it specifically?
>
>  From my point of view he has already requested support of \citenum by
> that message.

I just mean here, in general. If people complain about missing
mappings or performance issues silently, or elsewhere, without ever
raising them on the list, then it's hard to address them.

> I have an impression that the ball is on the side of the org-cite, and
> next steps may be to ask for real documents (e.g. open access papers)
> that are prepared with such format and to discuss most suitable style
> for CSL.

Suffice to say I disagree :-)

Sorry if the below gets wordy, but it's complicated.

Finding and analyzing existing papers again raises the question of
which ones; citation practices look VERY different in chemistry than
in art history or sociology. It also raises the question of who will
do this work, and whether it's the most efficient use of their time.
And finally, your suggestion seems to assume we didn't put a lot of
research and thought into the existing mappings.

Have you actually looked at the table of existing mappings? See table
1 here (which it seems we might want to add to the manual?):

https://blog.tecosaur.com/tmio/2021-07-31-citations.html#cite-syntax

Those mappings merely generalize existing systems (bibtex, natbib,
biblatex, csl) used by millions of users (if you include Zotero,
etc.), and already incorporate the feedback of those users.

So the styles included now ARE a sound starting point, that we can
iterate based on feedback.

We can and should add "number" and "entry" (for "bibentry" and
biblatex "fullcite") styles to those mappings, however, at least for
natbib and biblatex. But the first is one of those lower-level types
of commands, and probably why it's not there now.

On that last point, I do want people to understand that there are
places where you can't easily generalize across those systems, because
the logic of them varies in places. Biblatex, most notably, has IIRC
more than 50 commands, which also vary by style used. And some of
those commands (like autocite) are high-level and appropriate for this
sort of mapping, and others (like footcite) are low-level, and
probably not. Adding every option may make a small number of power
users happy, but at the expense of raising complexity for others.
Which is why the new defcustom is a good compromise.

CSL is different here than the LaTeX alternatives, as Andras can just
add support for some feature to citeproc-el, and add a style for it to
oc-csl. But CSL also has a different design than the LaTeX options,
and so will always be simpler. For example, in effect, all citations
in a CSL systems work like biblatex's "auto" commands. If one uses a
note-based citation style, citations get automatically footnoted, for
example, and so one can seamlessly change between note-based and other
kinds of styles, without having to modify the document source.

So missing mappings aren't necessarily an oversight; it might just be
that how to implement them was unclear, or whether users would need or
want them.



Bruce