[Numpy-discussion] coding style: citations

[Alan G Isaac]

On 1/12/2009 9:08 AM jh at physics.ucf.edu apparently wrote:
> For citation keys, what's wrong with good old author-year format? 
> Most scientific journals use it (Abt 1985). 
> Abt, H. 1985.  Harold Abt used to publish surveys of things like 
>   citations when he was ApJ editor in the 1980s but I'm making this
>   one up just to demonstrate the format except he'd never allow an
>   article title in a citation because he wanted to save ink which
>   everyone hated so other journals keep the titles and we should too.
>   ApJ 123:1-23.

There are two problems.

1. The only real problem is that it is not a reST citation,
so links to the citation will not be generated, and you cannot
control the citation formatting separately.  You can still
of course use normal internal targets:

See `(Abt 1985)`_.
Some more text, and later ...

.. _(Abt 1985):

Abt, H. 1985.  Harold Abt used to publish surveys of things
like citations when he was ApJ editor in the 1980s but I'm
making this one up just to demonstrate the format except
he'd never allow an article title in a citation because he
wanted to save ink which everyone hated so other journals
keep the titles and we should too.  ApJ 123:1-23.

2. The failure to use citation keys implies that
there will be neither a citation database nor consistent
formatting.  (Say, if the docs become a book.) I do not
suppose this is *currently* a real problem.

Cheers,
Alan Isaac