Re: [O] Citation syntax: Underscore MUST(?) be allowed in cite keys?

[Richard Lawrence]

Vaidheeswaran C <address@hidden> writes:

> On Friday 06 March 2015 11:39 PM, Richard Lawrence wrote:
>> Hi Vaidheeswaran,
>> 
>> Vaidheeswaran C <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>>> The following combination works when passed through the LaTeX/PDF
>>> exporter.  It doesn't work when the cite syntax is switched to the new
>>> one.
>>>
>>> \cite{center_for_history_and_new_media_zotero_????}
>> 
>> Is that a realistic example of a key?
>
> Yes.
> It is generated by Zotero.

OK.

> Have you tried it with \cite{} and \bibliography{} combination and
> seen it works or not.  My argument relies on how existing tool works.

I don't understand what your argument is, exactly.  So what if Zotero
sometimes produces keys like this?  So what if a LaTeX document will
compile with such keys?  Is it your position that that means Org keys
must allow punctuation at the end?

> I see that you haven't exporter Zotero libraries to .bib files.  My
> guess is the 4 question marks are for "missing" (or "irrelevant") yyyy
> digits.

If such keys represent references with missing data, the document
produced by even `successful' compilation will be incomplete in some
way.  

Like I said, this seems like an edge case, and I don't see that it is
necessarily Org's responsibility to accommodate the keys produced by
Zotero in such edge cases.  And there is a significant benefit to *not*
accommodating such keys: namely, you can use in-text citations at the
end of a sentence.

Again, if there were reason to think that keys which end with
punctuation are common even in the normal case where the data is
complete and correct, that would be reason to re-think the syntax of Org
citation keys.  But Org's citation syntax can't be expected to handle
every tool's behavior in every edge case.
 
Best,
Richard