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

Martin Maechler maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Mon Mar 27 15:25:37 CEST 2017


>>>>> Fox, John <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
>>>>>     on Mon, 16 Jan 2017 15:44:05 +0000 writes:

    > 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."

In the mean time, I have always used my proposed change.
I think any number between 1 and Inf is so much arbitrary that
inspite of your good thoughts I kept the *new* default at Inf.

and because of this open question, I have forgotten to commit
the change to the development version of R !

I have done so now, however not ported it yet to  "R 3.4.0 alpha".
If not much surfaces (in CRAN / Bioc checks), we may port it in
time for 3.4.0.


Martin

    > 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



More information about the R-package-devel mailing list