Re: [Docutils-users] Scientific article example

[Alan G I. <ai...@am...>]

>> My view is that your citation should specify the volume,
>> although obviously your field may have a different
>> practice.  In any case [mykey{page:197,volume:2}]_ does
>> what you want.

> No, not at all, because that undermines the whole purpose
> of bibliographic management, that you specify the minimal
> data, and let the formatter format it. In this case, there
> are two different bits of data, along with the key: the
> page number, and the volume. MLA may require that you
> write "p. 55, vol. 2" whereas another publication may
> require that you write "page:197, Volume:2".

In that case, use a different key for each citation,
and then use a style that formats that key in any way you find useful.
So you really should be creating a separate **database entry** for each
volume, and then rely on a formatter-style for citation creation.
E.g., see Bibtex's conventions.


> but I'm not sure what you mean by "too implicit."

You are proposing conventions that are not unambiguous
and (as a result) not readily extensible.

Be sure to distinguish citations and citation references.
As things stand, it is already possible to handle citation
formatting using e.g. bibstuff.  You can also use bibstuff
to substitute text for citation references, to a certain
extent.  The problem is that that reST provides no syntax
for associating *instance-specific* information with a
particular instance of a citation reference.  I'm just
proposing a *syntax* for doing that.  It has *no* implications
for what will be done with that info (e.g., how it will be
formatted).

In any case, no developer has expressed interest so far.

Cheers,
Alan