Hi Juan,
On Sun, 24 Jan 2021 at 16:20, Juan Manuel Macías
<maciasch...@posteo.net> wrote:
I agree with what you comment here and in your previous message. In
fact, I'm afraid this (humble) approach of mine is focused only on
creating a mere list of references in HTML from a bib file, keeping
the
same bibliography styles that I have customized in bibLaTeX, but not
on
everything related to citations throughout the text and on the
consistency between citations and bibliographies. I would say that my
method is not a good starting point to implement a solution. [...]
In my case, anyway, I had been using the TeX ecosystem almost
exclusively for my work in typesetting and editorial design (I do not
use DTP software, which is not intended to create books but magazines
and newspapers), and Org Mode for writing and notes. But in recent
years
I have come to realize that a workflow based also on Org and
Org-Publish
is tremendously productive for me to manage the typesetting of a book,
especially a complex book. Let's say now I also use Org as a
high-level
interface for LaTeX. I'm currently working on the /Hispanic Dictionary
of Classical Tradition/ (/Diccionario Hispánico de la Tradición
Clásica/), a volume of multiple authorship and about 1200 pages. The
method I raised in this thread has to do with this scenario, where
each
dictionary entry is accompanied by a bibliography. As the dictionary
will have an online secondary version, I wanted to keep the same
bibliography style that I had defined for bibLaTeX. I have not had the
problem of the citations here, since the entries do not contain
citations (bibliographies only). Otherwise, I think an emergency
solution could be to export from Org to *.tex, and then generate the
HTML from there using make4ht and another preamble /ad hoc/, better
than
using a mixed csl/bibLaTeX method which, as you say, can result in
many
inconsistencies.
Well, I think your approach should work quite well for your use case,
and certainly a number of others. It is just a matter of being aware of
the limitations of the tool. That given, it is great. Of course, I was
also curious how you had figured things from a more general perspective.
The
essential problem, of course, is that our customization is
LaTeXcentric:
it resides in LaTeX/bibLaTeX and not in Org. [...]
I think it is more than just being "LaTeXcentric". Depending on
requirements, there is really no choice. We don't hear this often, but
the fact is that Org does not support citation and bibliography by
itself. A lot of things "work", and in many requirements scenarios that
seems to be enough, but what does work relies on outsourcing that task
to other tools. As far as I know, there are only two ways out of an Org
document with citation and bibliography: LaTeX (and its related tools:
bibtex, biblatex, biber, etc), and pandoc (which uses CSL to process
these features). The first option is extremely featureful, but
restricts us to .pdf output. The only sufficiently general option with
multi output is then pandoc, which in turn bypasses the whole Org export
infrastructure, implying its own trade-offs because of that. Besides,
there is no real link between the LaTeX infrastructure and pandoc/CSL,
so that if you want to reach "best results in LaTeX, and acceptable
results in other formats", you are bound to live with differences in
output for citation/references across formats and to remain under the
restrictions of the least featureful backend.
Long ago I tended to be more in favor of the idea that a single
source-text should produce multiple identical or interchangeable
formats. I really still believe it with enthusiasm and I have not
completely lost faith in such a utopia ;-)
I'd also would love to see that. ;-)
And I do think Org is, by far, the best placed tool to fill this place.
But I also think citations and bibliography are a big bottleneck in that
regard. Of course, there is a long ongoing effort in that area, in the
`wip-cite' branch, and the related `org-citeproc' package. I'm still in
the hope this will get merged in future not too distant, as it would
change things in that regard. Not in the sense of "magically solving
all of these problems", but in providing a convened base upon which
people can than invest their time and effort, and try to figure each
case out, with time.
Best regards,
Gustavo.