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

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

Disclaimer: I am neither org-cite no org-ref user. In the past I used 
LaTeX and BibTeX directly though, and it is a reason why I am reading 
the discussions.

On 20/03/2022 20:19, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:
> Vikas Rawal writes:
> 
>> This obviously creates many problems including that two people using
>> different citation systems cannot share org files.
> 
> Indeed.
>>
>> What is the general view of the community about this?
> 
> I don't know about the general view of the community, but, as a data
> point, I find it very sad.

Nicolas, I think, a part of problem is that you are not an org-cite 
user. The packages require some *polishing*, but it have to be 
*user-driven*. Even if the feature were perfect, it would face some 
tension from people who already have a working solution.

A bit of routine work will alleviate some user issues:
- add missed styles
- improve documentation, e.g. to make backend choice more conscious.

Another point is more serious. Besides citations there are internal 
cross-references. Org supports them but only in a rudimentary form. 
Actually cross-references are similar to citations in the sense that 
they can have style, prefixes and suffixes, and their appearance depends 
on target properties. Another feature is grouping. However 
cross-references should not be handled by citation backends, they 
require different handlers. Unfortunately there is no way to define 
custom "citation" type e.g. "[ref:...]" in addition to "[cite:...]".

I can not judge if uniform UI issues are really severe and if it would 
be convenient if depending on prefix argument either org-cite or org-ref 
command would be called for a citation or for a reference.

Actually "[cite:...]" construct is a kind of link with additional 
flexibility missed for regular links. Anything besides target and 
description requires some workarounds. Usual approach is proliferation 
of link types. E.g. inline source blocks allows almost arbitrary extra 
parameters. Citation syntax is rather domain specific, it allows more 
than regular links, but for convenience the set of properties is fixed: 
style, prefixes, locators, suffixes. It is impossible to add extra one.

To assign additional properties, info "(org) Links in HTML export" 
https://orgmode.org/manual/Links-in-HTML-export.html recommends usage of 
"#+ATTR_HTML", but such technique has several issues:
- attributes becomes specific to the export backend
- the same attributes are added to the enclosing paragraph
   https://linevi.ch/en/org-link-extra-attrs.html
- a paragraph may have more than one link.
It is possible to use link target similar to form values encoded into 
URI, but it hardly can be considered as convenient for editing.

Custom citation types may alleviate the issue with cross-references. It 
would be great to have more flexible links with arbitrary properties 
(and it would allow to consider citations and cross-references as 
special cases of links), but it does not fit into the Org syntax.

P.S. John has a valid complain but it hardly relates to the "cite vs. 
cross-reference" topic. When some package is not loaded and link type is 
undefined then the link becomes a fuzzy one leading to user confusion.