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

[Fox, John]

Dear Martin,

Thanks for addressing this question, if belatedly!

After a little bit of thought, perhaps a default somewhere between 1 and Inf makes sense, along with an additional argument to citation: citation(package="pkg", bibtex.max=n), with default bibtex.max= getOption("citation.bibtex.max"), where the citation.bibtex.max option is initially set to something like 4. If the number of available citations exceeds bibtex.max, then a message like "there are additional BiBTeX citations, enter 'citation(package="pkg", bibtex.max=Inf)' to see all of them."

Best,
 John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Maechler [mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch]
> Sent: Monday, January 16, 2017 10:02 AM
> To: Fox, John <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
> Cc: r-package-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] multiple bibentry()s in CITATION
> 
> >>>>> 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