On 12/7/2018 18:01, Alan Braslau wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Dec 2018 17:19:35 -0500
> Rik Kabel <context@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
>> As a followup, here is a close-to-minimal example which demonstrates the
>> failure when \placebtxrendering is omitted.
> It is not a failure. The whole intent is to place an appropriate rendering that you can tailor to your specific needs. There is little sense in a cross-reference (link) or reference number if there is not sort of list.
>
> Alan

That makes absolutely no sense. That means that an informal paper that 
puts all references in footnotes and has no bibliography and does not 
need cross-referencing or reference numbering cannot take advantage of a 
bibliographic database. And in fact, that is the case shown below. The 
footnotes appear only when the comment line is uncommented.

(I also tried \nocite[*] together with \placebtxrendering[method=none] 
and also with \placebtxrendering[criterium=none] for the rendering, but 
that does not help. It seems that the entries only display when 
something gets added to the rendering list.)

    \startbuffer[quotesources]
    @book{Schopenhauer1862v2,
       title       = {Parerga und Paralipomena},
       subtitle    = {Kleine Philosophische Schriften},
       publisher   = {A. W. Hahn},
       year        = {1862},
       volume      = {2},
       volumes     = {2},
       author      = {Arthur Schopenhauer},
       editor      = {Julius Frauenstädt},
       address     = {Berlin},
       language    = {german},
    }
    @book{SchopenhauerPayne2000,
       title       = {Parerga and Paralipomena},
       subtitle    = {Short Philosophical Essays},
       publisher   = {Oxford University Press Clarendon Press},
       address     = {New York and Oxford},
       year        = {2000},
       author      = {Arthur Schopenhauer},
       volumes     = {2},
       origyear    = {1974},
       origlanguage= {german},
       translator  = {Eric F. J. Payne},
    }
    \stopbuffer

    \loadbtxdefinitionfile
       [apa]
    \usebtxdefinitions
       [apa]
    \usebtxdataset
       [quotesources.buffer]

    \starttext

       As Artie said:\footnote{\placecitation[Schopenhauer1862v2]}

       Es wäre gut Bücher kaufen, wenn man die Zeit, sie zu
       lesen, mitkaufen könnte, aber man verweschelt meistens
       den Ankauf der Bücher mit dem Aneignen ihres Inhalts.

       Payne translates this as:\footnote{\cite[entry][SchopenhauerPayne2000]}

       Buying books would be a good thing if one could also
       buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the
       purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation
       of their contents.

    %  \placebtxrendering [method=dataset]
    \stoptext

I understood §5.4 of the manual to mean that rendering definitions 
(created by \definebtxrendering and related setups) do not have an 
effect on \placecitation (and \cite[field][tag]) commands. Rereading it, 
I wonder if the meaning is supposed to be more than that, and to cover 
this situation?

Surely this can be changed!

-- 
Rik