Author: cpicke

Description:
I've recently been struggling with Wikipedia to get it to accept a common
scientific style for citing references. I've come to the conclusion that it's
not actually possible. This bug addresses several different issues, so I'd like
to have it be a meta or tracking bug.

I'm going to define some terms here to make this discussion more clear.
"citation sources" are placed in the main body of article source code.
"formatted citations" appear as numbers in formatted article text where citation
sources are. "reference sources" provide details such as title, author name,
etc. "formatted references" appear at the end of an article, or where the
<references/> tag is placed, and contain a nicely formatted presentation of
what's in the reference source.

Here is what's necessary for this bug to be fixed completely:

1. a reference source is identifiable by a unique id.
2. a citation source refers to a unique reference source.
3. multiple citation sources may be placed side by side.
4. side-by-side citation sources are combined into a list in the formatted citation.
5. citation sources never contain a reference source, unless that source is

transcluded from a global template, in which case the citation source simply
looks like {{BIB-unique-id}}.

6. formatted citations may be selectably not superscripted on a per-article basis.
7. reference sources are either maintained in a list at the end of the article,

or are transcludable from a global template, one reference source per template.

8. the sort order of formatted references is selectable.
9. it is not necessary in any way, shape, or form to have level of indirection

between formatted citations and formatted references via a footnotes list. if
footnotes (or endnotes) appear at all, they are for things that are not in the
formatted references list.

Just for context, these are some (uncompilable) bits of latex/bibtex source that
i'd like to be able to translate:

%% from file article.tex

blah \cite{unique-id-1}. blah \cite{unique-id-1}\cite{unique-id-2}. blah
\cite{unique-id-1, unique-id-2}. blah \cite{unique-id-1, unique-id-3,
unique-id-4, unique-id-5}.

\bibliography{sources}

%% from file sources.bib:

@inproceedings{unique-id-1,

author = A
title = A A
booktitle = A A A

}

@inproceedings{unique-id-2,

author = B
title = B B 
booktitle = B B B

}

@inproceedings{unique-id-3,

author = C
title = C C
booktitle = C C C

}

@inproceedings{unique-id-4,

author = D
title = D D
booktitle = D D D

}

@inproceedings{unique-id-5,

author = E
title = E E
booktitle = E E E

}

The generated text looks like this:

blah [1]. blah [1][2]. blah [1,2]. blah [1,3-5]}.

References

[1] A "A A" A A A.
[2] B "B B" B B B.
[3] C "C C" C C C.
[4] D "D D" D D D.
[5] E "E E" E E E.

And that's all there is to it. You can see my current attempts to get this
working at the URL for the bug, it's a scientific article I'm maintaining.
Please don't play around editing the references on that page unless it's a clear
improved in line with what I've asked for.

Cheers,
Chris

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement