citations whose id starts with a digit are not processed

[mcmtroffaes]

Example:

---
title: Test
references:
- id: 1657:huygens
  publisher-place: Lugd. Batav.
  page: 517-524
  container-title: 'Exercitationum mathematicarum libri quinque: Quibus accedit
    Christiani Hugenii tractatus de ratiociniis in aleæ ludo'
  author:
  - family: Huygens
    given: Christiaan
  issued:
    year: 1657
  title: De ratiociniis in ludo aleæ
  type: chapter
  publisher: Ex officina Johannis Elsevirii
  editor:
  - family: Schooten
    given: Franciscus á
...

[@1657:huygens]

renders - without error messages - as

[@1657:huygens]

instead of

(Huygens 1657)

Huygens, Christiaan. 1657. “De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleæ.” In Exercitationum Mathematicarum Libri Quinque: Quibus Accedit Christiani Hugenii Tractatus de Ratiociniis in Aleæ Ludo, edited by Franciscus á Schooten, 517–24. Lugd. Batav.: Ex officina Johannis Elsevirii.

Changing the id to, for example, x1657:huygens, makes it work again, so the issue appears to be that the id starts with a digit.

In bibtex, it is perfectly valid for citation ids to start with the year, so it would be nice if pandoc-citeproc could support this as well.

[jgm]

That's intentional (see pandoc User's Guide under citations).

I worried that if we allowed citations to start with digits, we'd
falsely capture some things that weren't intened as citations,
e.g. 15 apples @5ea. Maybe this is overthinking, though.

+++ Matthias C. M. Troffaes [Jan 09 15 01:50 ]:

Example:

---
title: Test
references:
- id: 1657:huygens
 publisher-place: Lugd. Batav.
 page: 517-524
 container-title: 'Exercitationum mathematicarum libri quinque: Quibus accedit
   Christiani Hugenii tractatus de ratiociniis in aleæ ludo'
 author:
 - family: Huygens
   given: Christiaan
 issued:
   year: 1657
 title: De ratiociniis in ludo aleæ
 type: chapter
 publisher: Ex officina Johannis Elsevirii
 editor:
 - family: Schooten
   given: Franciscus á
...

[@1657:huygens]

renders - without error messages - as

[@1657:huygens]

instead of

(Huygens 1657)

Huygens, Christiaan. 1657. “De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleæ.” In Exercitationum Mathematicarum Libri Quinque: Quibus Accedit Christiani Hugenii Tractatus de Ratiociniis in Aleæ Ludo, edited by Franciscus á Schooten, 517–24. Lugd. Batav.: Ex officina Johannis Elsevirii.

Changing the id to, for example, x1657:huygens, makes it work again, so the issue appears to be that the id starts with a digit.

In bibtex, it is perfectly valid for citation ids to start with the year, so it would be nice if pandoc-citeproc could support this as well.

---

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#97

[mcmtroffaes]

Thanks for your quick response. Indeed this is mentioned in the User's Guide. I thought I had read it, but I missed this detail.

Nevertheless, personally, I find the distinction between digits and letters surprising. The standard way in markdown to prevent special characters to act their magic is to backslash them. This already works e.g. \@x1657:huyghens is indeed rendered correctly as @x1657:huyghens and not as a citation. The same could work for \@5ae.

A change would of course break backwards compatibility. It's hard to tell how many people would rely on @5ae not being a citation in documents that use citeproc; probably not many?

[jgm]

Closed by jgm/pandoc#1954.