Re: [Bibulus-dev] LaTeX-Bibulus interface, a prposal

[Thomas M. Widmann]

address@hidden (Palle Jørgensen) writes:

> I am trying to find out how the user interface should with the bibulus
> LaTeX package.
> 
> An idea would be to make it a keyval interface:
> 
> \cite[language = <language>,
>       type = <citation type>,
>       bibliography = <bibliography in the document>,
>       ]{key(s)}

Looks good in general.

> 'language' is the language of tyhe citation. By default this is set to
>            be the language at the current point in the text, set with
>            the \selectlanguage command.

Why would one ever want a language other than the current one?
But it'll be nice for debugging purposes at least.

> 'bibliography' if one wants to use several bibliographies in the same
>                document.

Good.  Very useful.

> 'type' could be text, number, author-number, author-year etc.
> [...]
> 'Old' commands of the natbib package and others, is to be iomplementet
> as citet -> \cite[type=text].

Aren't you confusing two things here?

1) Citation mode (numerical, author-year, author-number, in footnotes,
   in text, ...);

2) Citation type (in parentheses, within text cited as person, within
   text cited as title, ...).

I don't think it makes much sense to change the former locally,
whereas the latter should be specified each time.

> The questions are:
> 
>  o  Is this the best interface?

At least it's easy to understand, and I cannot think of anything
better.

>  o  Wich keys are needed?
> 
>     I have som suggestions (besides those mentioned above):
> 
>       - 'optional' for optional text

We probably want more than one field for this.  For instance, Natbib
allows the following:

  \citep[see][chap. 2]{key} ==>> (see Jones et al., 1990, chap. 2)

BTW, Natbib also allows access to individual parts of an entry:

  \citeauthor{key}     ==>> Jones et al.
  \citeauthor*{key}    ==>> Jones, Baker, and Williams
  \citeyear{key}       ==>> 1990
  \citeyearpar{key}    ==>> (1990)

I think we could generalise this a bit to allow access to any part of
the entry (e.g., title, short title, pages, ...).

>       - 'label' for internal LaTeX references

What do you mean by this?

> Of course it must be possible to set these parameters globally as
> defaults. (Mostly the type key and the bibliography, the 'label'
> would be silly to set globally...) With these defaults the interface
> is the old \cite command.

I must admit I think it's dangerous to have only one general command.
I think it was wise that Natbib split \cite up into \citet and \citep
to make authors conscious about the difference.

/Thomas
-- 
Thomas Widmann          Bye-bye to BibTeX: join the Bibulus project now!
address@hidden              <http://www.nongnu.org/bibulus/>
Glasgow, Scotland, EU     <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/bibulus/>