Re: citeproc updates

[Frank Bennett <biercenator-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 10:32 AM, John MacFarlane <fiddlosopher-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Before I write the parser, we need to settle whether there
> should be a separate syntax for "textual citations",
> and if so, how they are going to be represented.
>
> I myself think there should be a separate syntax, along
> the lines I suggested earlier.  I also think we do *not*
> need a separate syntax for "author-only."
>
> So, assuming that we are going to parse
>
> @jones99 [p. 30]
>
> as a textual citation -- which will ultimately be handled
> as if it were two citations, one author-only, the next
> suppress-author -- how should it be represented in the
> AST?
>
> One possibility is just to use two Cite inlines, one with
> author-only, the next with suppress-author.
>
> Advantages:
>
> * No changes needed to citeproc or pandoc-types
>
> Disadvantages:
>
> * Complicates parsing.  The pandoc inline parsers are set up
>  to emit a single Inline each.  To handle this case, I'd need to
>  add a Group Inline (simply a container for a group of
>  Inlines, like HTML span) and emit that, or rewrite all
>  of the Inline parsers to emit lists of Inlines, or
>  do something fancy with parser state.
>
> * Complicates translation to-from bibtex.  Suppose we want
>  an option to use bibtex instead of citeproc in the LaTeX writer.
>  (Several people have requested this.)   The writer would
>  have to be trained to recognize the two-inline sequence.
>  This can be done, but as above, it complicates things.
>
> The alternative would be to add a textual citation inline,
> perhaps by adding a boolean flag ("isTextual") to
> the Cite inline element.  citeproc-hs would then have
> to recognize the textual citation and use convert
> to a CSL author-only followed by a suppress-author
> in producing the formatted citation.  (We'd have to
> settle what to do if more than one Citation is
> included; this doesn't really make sense with a
> textual citation.) This would require
> further modifications to citeproc-hs and pandoc-types,
> but would make things easier for the markdown parser
> and the writers.
>
> Thoughts?

At present, the "author-only" + "suppress-author" behavior of the
citeproc-js processor is not being used anywhere outside of the
project test suite.  So while I think Bruce has a desire on CSL side
to have processors share a common API, there's no reason to take what
citeproc-js does as controlling; I'd be very happy to line its
behavior up with whatever works best in pandoc for this use case.

(In fact, after the initial tests passed, I considered bundling this
behavior into a single operation, just as John suggests, but never got
back to it.)

Re what to do with multiple citations in an "author-only" cite, it
might make sense for the processors to just ignore "author-only" and
"suppress-author" completely on clusters with multiple items.  Some
styles sort the cite items before rendering, which could result in
citation content and formatting that looks right on the page, but
which in fact does not reflect the (immediate) author's intention.

Those are just some random thoughts from me.  I'll leave it to Bruce
and Andrea to speak to the result of any discussion on the CSL list.

Frank

>
> John
>
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