Christian, thank you for those suggestions. There are two major problems with trying to resolve this via the use of explicit footnotes, whether in-line or at the document’s end.
In both cases, when exporting to PDF via LaTeX, the second reference will not be recognized as a reference at all. Instead, the raw citekey is printed in the document. I just tested this using the same software versions listed in my first email. I should add that exporting to PDF via LaTeX is the main use-case for those requiring any of this functionality. Perhaps more importantly, what is necessary is not the ability to put a period after *every* single citation. Rather, one needs to be able to list several works, separated by semicolons (the standard behavior already), then end that list with a period and begin a new list of works within the same note. Basically, the org-cite syntax should allow user control over punctuation. A functional escape character could accomplish this for PDF exports, because all that Org’s code actually has to do is separate the citekey from whatever punctuation follows it. LaTeX’s engine(s) already contextually replaces semicolons in footnotes when conflicting punctuation is present. Ideally, this behavior would be consistent across all types of Org exports, but that would be more labor-intensive to implement, since the LaTeX engine’s behavior would need to be effected independently, so far as I understand.
