[ Moving discussion to Org mailing list, where it belongs ] Zac E <zac.end...@gmail.com> writes:
>>> [cite:@cohen2003consum-repub.;@trentmann2016empire-things] >> This is ambiguous. "." can be a part of citation key. >> There is no bug here. Just a limitation that we cannot easily force end >> of citation key in Org syntax. > I don’t believe that it is quite that ambiguous. > Technically, periods are legal in bibtex or biblatex > citekeys. In practice, however, they are rarely > used, and they are never used at the end of citekeys > (since their only function would be as a divider). > It is absolutely a bug in the general sense, i.e. the > software does not behave in the expected way. > I would add that this bug is quite literally the only one > keeping org-mode from being capable of generating > papers in the humanities. It is not a bug in a sense that we obey Org syntax, as we define it in https://orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html#Citation_References Whether the way Org behaves is expected or not depends on the users and may wary. Yet, we need to have some common ground. It is just not what you personally expect in this particular case. That said, Org syntax is not 100% set in stone and we may consider changing it if there are good arguments. > There are two options. > > 1) the parser could ignore periods at the end of citekeys. > This means breaking strict bibtex compatibility, since > technically a period is allowed anywhere—again, not a > practical issue, and Pandoc already makes an exception > for periods at the end, as I have proposed. It might be an option. However, if some users happen to use period at the end of citation key, disallowing it will be a deal-breaker. Much worse than in your case (see below). > 2) Org’s parser could allow for a backslash escape > character between a citekey and a period. This is a > standard escape character, and there is to the best of > my knowledge no reason why it could not be implemented. Org mode has escape character. It is zero-width space. See https://orgmode.org/manual/Escape-Character.html So, you can try [cite:@cohen2003consum-repub.;@trentmann2016empire-things] Historically, we decided not to use backslash as escape character. In the past, we also discussed alternative ways to escape Org syntax. For example, we may introduce a special entity like \- that will serve as syntax separator: [cite:@cohen2003consum-repub\-.;@trentmann2016empire-things] -- Ihor Radchenko // yantar92, Org mode maintainer, Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>. Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>, or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>
