Hi all, Aaron Ecay <aarone...@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi Nicolas, > > Thanks for writing this up. It is important to think about, and > ultimately solve, all the issues you raise. Yes, thanks for this, Nicolas! > 2015ko urriak 25an, Nicolas Goaziou-ek idatzi zuen: >> >> ** Citations >> >> Development apparently stopped for some reason. We have a citation >> syntax for Org in wip-cite and some work done in wip-cite-awe and >> probably elsewhere. >> >> I think we could at least provide features defined in Org Ref using the >> new syntax (minus hydra/helm related functions). >> >> We don't need a silver bullet. Just something with a non-empty user >> base, and extensible. In any case, the work done so far shouldn't be >> wasted. > > I was working on this rather intensively at one time, but I had to stop > because other aspects of life intruded. I have just been coming back > towards a situation where I can imagine myself having some (still small, > but non-zero) chunks of time to devote to working on org. So I hope I > will be able to pick this back up, but (regrettably) I’m not able to > make any promises. > > Based on my recollection, here’s what the problems were when I stopped: > > - The only “off the shelf”-capable citation processing library that we > found last time is in Haskell, which introduced some difficulties for > distributing the resulting tool. I know some projects > (e.g. git-annex) are written in Haskell and distributed as static > binaries for windows/mac/linux/etc. We’d need to figure out how to do > this, or find another citation processing library in an > easier-to-distribute language. Yes, this is my understanding, too. In particular, there does not seem to be an Elisp CSL library, and it would be a lot of work to write one. The other CSL library that looks complete and usable is citeproc-js; but like the Haskell library (pandoc-citeproc) it would need to be wrapped somehow so that it can talk with Org. It should be relatively straightforward for someone who knows Javascript to write such a wrapper, if anyone wants to work on that. But this does not really solve the problem with distribution. Either of the off-the-shelf CSL libraries will require both a wrapper and a platform for building/installing/running the wrapper and library as a complete external tool. > (I should say, all the work on the external tool was done by Richard > Lawrence; I worked on the exporter for the citation syntax including > the interface with an external tool.) The tool I was working on is here: https://github.com/wyleyr/org-citeproc The branch of Org that it needs is here: https://github.com/wyleyr/org-mode At the moment, it supports single- and multiple-work citations in inline styles (e.g. Chicago/Harvard type citations, and I think also styles that use numbered references to the bibliography). It doesn't presently work with note-based styles, and making it work will require some modifications on the Org side. Specifically, the Org side will have to get a bit smarter about how it inserts the formatted citations into the document (Org needs to understand them as footnotes so that they get correctly numbered, etc. amongst other non-citation footnotes). > - There is a difference between citations as done by latex/bibtex/etc., > and those done in every other format (handled through CSL). Assuming > latex users want to keep their native processing rather than > delegating to CSL, we need to solve the myriad small inconsistencies > between these two tools. I think this is an area where it’s important > to get things right: users of citations generally have exacting > requirements. “Approximately Chicago-style” or “almost MLA” aren’t > worth anything. I guess I would just add that it is not clear how much we need to solve here, at least in the short term. I can't remember whether we found any concrete examples of needs people have that BibLaTeX can handle but CSL cannot, or vice versa. Anyway, there is a core set of citation features that both types of backends handle readily, and I think it would be a big win to have these accessible via a common syntax in Org. No silver bullets is indeed the maxim to keep in mind. > (I should also say, if someone else is interested in working on this > please don’t hesitate to jump right in. I will help you however I can!) I also want to echo this. I don't really have much time to work on this myself right now (trying to get the ol' dissertation finished this year) but I will help out however I can. Best, Richard
