Hi All (and Nicolas in particular),
There's recently been a little bit of progress on the Pandoc issue for org-cite support (https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/7329#issuecomment-982805313), and the maintainers are now asking if there is any specification for org-cite syntax. Looking at https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html, there isn't, and so I've tried to come up with a draft. Most of it was worked out from what I know of the syntax combined with looking at org-element.el, however I'm not sure what character class applies to the global and key prefix/suffix components. The draft: Citation syntax is currently not documented, but from the implementation it looks something like this: #+begin_example [cite CITESTYLE: GLOBALPREFIX KEYCITES GLOBALSUFFIX] #+end_example The only mandatory component, =KEYCITES= consists of one or more instances of the pattern, separated by semicolons. #+begin_example KEYPREFIX @KEY KEYSUFFIX #+end_example =KEY= can be made of any word-constituent character, =-=, =.=, =:=, =?=, =!=, =`=, ='=, =/=, =*=, =@=, =+=, =|=, =(=, =)=, ={=, =}=, =<=, =>=, =&=, =_=, =^=, =$=, =#=, =%=, =%=, or =~=. I have not yet confirmed what =KEYPREFIX= and =KEYSUFFIX= may contain, but as a starting point, any of the characters allowed in =KEY= except =@= plus whitespace would seem fairly safe. =KEYSUFFIX= must start with a whitespace character to be able to be differentiated from =KEY=. =CITESTYLE= consists of a main =STYLE= and any number of =VARIANT=s (including zero), prefixed by forwards slashes in the following pattern #+begin_example /STYLE/VARIANT/VARIANT/VARIANT #+end_example =STYLE= and =VARIANT= can be made of any alphanumeric character, =_=, or =-=. =GLOBALPREFIX= and =GLOBALSUFFIX= can contain the same characters as =KEYPREFIX= and =KEYSUFFIX=, however =GLOBALPREFIX= must end with a semicolon, and =GLOBALSUFFIX= must start with a semicolon. "cite" and =CITESTYLE=, =KEYCITES= and =GLOBALSUFFIX= are /not/ separated by whitespace. Neither are =KEYPREFIX=, =@KEY=, or =KEYSUFFIX= separated by whitespace. Do let me know what you think :) Timothy.