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

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 12:00 PM John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> Nicolas, concerning a new thread, I have an impression that you are
> >> busy with over activities since you are participating in discussions
> >> not so frequently. So I am unsure at which moment it is appropriate to
> >> raise such question that otherwise may just be buried in the list
> >> archive.
> >
> > I don't see how my presence (or not) on the list relates to this. If
> > there's an idea worth a discussion, it should not be buried within
> > a thread.
> >
> >> Outside of Org, citations are links.
> >
> > But we're on an Org mailing list so…
> >
> >> I consider fixed set of properties as a problem.
> >
> > I don't think it is a problem for citations.
> >
> >> At first I tried to draw attention to additional link attributes.
> >
> > I think link attributes were discussed a couple of times on this ML
> > already. Nothing was implemented tho.
>
> I don't think any further implementation outside the existing link
> framework is required to do this. The only limitations of the current
> framework are (I think) it is limited to a single line (i.e. not
> multiline), and it would be difficult to have nested links.

I'm glad to hear that.

FWIW, by asking earlier about possible "incremental improvements" for
cross-references, I was including within that possible implementation
improvements: new helper functions or interactive commands, standard
link types, documentation, etc.

I note, for example, that currently local links do export as LaTeX
cross-references, and that if you use cleverref, the results seem
pretty reasonable from my non-expert POV.

But it's not easy from a UX POV to create those cross-references,
particularly with a longer, more complex, document.

And in my coding experiments [1] awhile back, it wasn't that
straightforward to create a UI to make that easier, mostly because it
wasn't unambiguous how to consistently parse common targets (sections,
figures, tables, equations) [2].

Bruce

[1] https://github.com/bdarcus/oxr
[2] 
https://github.com/bdarcus/oxr/blob/28ec1345e9c8d659afea6c8569479b667697eaa2/oxr.el#L108-L128

> Otherwise, you can put most things in the path, and then parse it as you
> see fit. I think it would be interesting to couple this with a recursive
> descent parser one day, and some DSL perhaps.
>
> There is a prototype of this idea at
> https://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2015/02/05/Extending-the-org-mode-link-syntax-with-attributes/
>
> I wouldn't claim it is the best way to do that, or the right thing to
> do.
>
> scimax-editmarks is a step further
> (https://github.com/jkitchin/scimax/blob/master/scimax-editmarks.org)
> that doesn't use org-links or any org-syntax for something more like an
> inline object. It mostly addresses the multiline issue, but it also
> doesn't support nested objects, mostly because of my limited knowledge
> of recursive parsing. I would not advocate for putting this in org
> either though.
>
> If you are interested in this kind of thing, you might find
> https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/linkd.el interesting too. It leverages
> an S-expression approach, which makes the parsing and nesting more
> straightforward.
>
> I know this is a little off-track of the original thread, but I agree
> with Nicolas that it does not seem necessary at this point to add this
> into org.
>
> >
> > I'm not convinced Org should generalize this to any inline object,
> > either, mainly because it sounds messy. Of course, if you have an
> > idea on the subject, please share it.
> >
> > In any case, this is another topic, neither related to citations nor to
> > cross-references.
> >
> >> For citations some values may be passed to specific citation backend
> >> overriding default value derived from style.
> >
> > In that situation, you can define a new style specific to the citation
> > back-end.
> >
> > Regards,
>
>
> --
> Professor John Kitchin
> Doherty Hall A207F
> Department of Chemical Engineering
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh, PA 15213
> 412-268-7803
> @johnkitchin
> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu
> Pronouns: he/him/his
>