[pmwiki-users] Problems with multiple citation entries per page (Was: bibliographies revisited)

[christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com]

On Sun, 1 Oct 2006, Crisses wrote:

> 
> On Oct 1, 2006, at 11:45 AM, christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> >Let's first figure out what the drawbacks are with not allowing multiple
> >citations per page. Primarily I'm worried about losing interoperability
> >with the BibTeX format.
> 
> I think multiple *citations* on a page -- as in an article which cites 
> several sources -- is a necessity.

I should have written "multiple citation entries per page".
                                         ^^^^^^^

> I think the data storage that citations and a References page 
> (pagelist?) are pulled from do not need to be on a single page.

I think they do. For instance, if I'm writing a single page about some 
topic (PmWiki.Cutlery), and I'd like to refer to a three URI:s about 
spoons, knifes and forks. At the moment I do not consider these references 
worthy of being put a site-wide bibliographic database, but I would like 
to be able to refer to them in this page. So how do I go about this 
"simple" task? Well, in principle I first need to create a new group, 
let's call it Cutlery-Bibliography/. Then I have to create three new pages 
in that group, call them Cutley-Bibliograph.Forks, 
Cutlery-Bibliography.Knifes and Cutlery-Bibliography.Spoons. In each of 
these pages I then add a single citation entry.

In practice, and if I know what I'm doing, I'd do it like this instead:
* Start writing my page about cutlery
* Cite keys as I go along, i.e. insert stuff like (:cite ...:).
  I have to remember to precede it with the right group prefix though,
  so it'd be something like (:cite Cutlery-Bibliography/Forks:).
* Save the page. Then click on the '?':s indicating non-existing citation 
  keys.

I'm still creating a new group with three new pages for something that is 
meant to be a one-off thing. 

Oh... and it get's interesting if I decide that the citation keys really 
should have been in singular rather then plural. Then I not only have to 
change the actual (:cite:), but I also have to create three new pages, 
copy the contents from the old pages and finally delete the old pages.


As an alternative to the above, if I could place a bibliography database 
in a single page, I could even place it *inside* the page about cutlery... 
I'd actually have all the information in a single self-contained page.

> These could be a group like "ReferenceWorks".  When I was talking about 
> one entry per page, and the advantage of being able to have comments 
> &/or discussion pages on each was so that people could discuss the 
> reference work itself, not the article making the citation.

Yes, I understood that part. This is *independent* with respect to having 
single or multiple citation entries per page.

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr