[R-pkg-devel] multiple bibentry()s in CITATION

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Fox, John <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
>>>>>     on Fri, 2 Sep 2016 15:42:46 +0000 writes:

(which is more than 4 months ago)

    > Dear list members,
    > I've noticed that citation(package="pkg") generates both a text citation and a BiBTeX entry when the CITATION file contains a single call to bibentry() or citEntry(), but that only text citations are shown if there are multiple calls to bibentry() or citEntry(). 

    > Is this behaviour intentional? In my opinion, it's useful always to show the BiBTeX (although it's available through toBibtex(citation(package="pkg")) ).

    > The Writing R Extensions manual says, "A CITATION file will contain *calls* [my emphasis] to function bibentry."

    > Thanks,
    > John

and you did not get a reply....
I had wanted but forgotten about it ... two parts :

1)  On November 24, 2012,  I had improved R with an option to get this
    so this has been a "hidden gem" ;-) for a while in R:

> options(citation.bibtex.max = Inf)
> citation(package = "Rcmdr")

To cite the 'Rcmdr' package in publications use:

  Fox, J., and Bouchet-Valat, M. (2017). Rcmdr: R Commander. R package version 2.3-2.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {{Rcmdr: R Commander}},
    author = {John Fox and Milan Bouchet-Valat},
    year = {2017},
    note = {R package version 2.3-2},
    url = {http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/},
  }

  Fox, J. (2017). Using the R Commander: A Point-and-Click Interface or R. Boca Raton FL:
  Chapman and Hall/CRC Press.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Book{,
    title = {Using the {R Commander}: A Point-and-Click Interface for {R}},
    author = {John Fox},
    year = {2017},
    publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC Press},
    address = {Boca Raton {FL}},
    url = {http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/RCommander/},
  }

  Fox, J. (2005). The R Commander: A Basic Statistics Graphical User Interface to R.
  Journal of Statistical Software, 14(9): 1--42.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Article{,
    title = {The {R} {C}ommander: A Basic Statistics Graphical User Interface to {R}},
    author = {John Fox},
    year = {2005},
    journal = {Journal of Statistical Software},
    volume = {14},
    number = {9},
    pages = {1--42},
    url = {http://www.jstatsoft.org/v14/i09},
  }

>
----------------

This all works "obviously" (;-) via utils:::format.bibentry ()
and even when I had made the number one an argument to that
function with a default you can set via options(),  I had
wondered a bit  why the cutoff should by default be at one.

E.g., it looks strange that by *adding* a 2nd reference, you get
shorter citation output.... and to me it would seem more coherent
to have the default rather be 'Inf' instead of '1',  i.e. always
showing both text and bibtex.

There is quite a difference though: For our copula package, e.g.,

> options(citation.bibtex.max = 1); citation(package = "copula")

To cite the R package copula in publications use:

  Marius Hofert, Ivan Kojadinovic, Martin Maechler and Jun Yan (2017). copula:
  Multivariate Dependence with Copulas. R package version 0.999-16 URL
  https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=copula

  Jun Yan (2007). Enjoy the Joy of Copulas: With a Package copula. Journal of Statistical
  Software, 21(4), 1-21. URLhttp://www.jstatsoft.org/v21/i04/.

  Ivan Kojadinovic, Jun Yan (2010). Modeling Multivariate Distributions with Continuous
  Margins Using the copula R Package. Journal of Statistical Software, 34(9), 1-20. URL
  http://www.jstatsoft.org/v34/i09/.

  Marius Hofert, Martin Maechler (2011). Nested Archimedean Copulas Meet R: The nacopula
  Package. Journal of Statistical Software, 39(9), 1-20. URL
  http://www.jstatsoft.org/v39/i09/.

>

This is relatively compact (18 lines)
whereas it gives  67 lines of output when the option is set to
something >= 4.

Other opinions?
What do you think, would it be worth the compatibility break to
change the default from '1' to 'Inf' ?

Best regards,
Martin