[org-cite] allow citations in captions?

[org-cite] allow citations in captions?

[Bruce D'Arcus]

Is there any technical reason citations aren't allowed in captions?

If not, could that restriction be removed?

I do note LaTeX requires special handling for that though;
\protect\cite{ref} or {\cite{ref}}.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4487728/latex-inserting-a-reference-in-a-figures-caption

Bruce

Re: [org-cite] allow citations in captions?

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

"Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com> writes:

> Is there any technical reason citations aren't allowed in captions?

Yes, there is. Captions are somewhat fragile: they may or may not be
included in the final output. So this might introduce some subtle bugs,
such as pointers (op. cit., or ibid) to non-existing references. For the
same reason, footnotes references are not allowed in citations either.
I don't know if the benefits outweigh these possible complications.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: [org-cite] allow citations in captions?

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 8:00 AM Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> "Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Is there any technical reason citations aren't allowed in captions?
>
> Yes, there is. Captions are somewhat fragile: they may or may not be
> included in the final output. So this might introduce some subtle bugs,
> such as pointers (op. cit., or ibid) to non-existing references. For the
> same reason, footnotes references are not allowed in citations either.
> I don't know if the benefits outweigh these possible complications.

I'm not sure either. But they're not uncommon in the wild.

The "subtle bugs" you mention: does that example you note only apply
to output formats that omit the captions?

The important export formats for academic writing are latex, odt, and
(less so) html, all of which do include the captions. Are there others
you are thinking of?

Bruce