Typst writer: Cite with NormalCitation followed by no space?

[cscheid]

Consider:

$ ./pandoc --version
pandoc 3.4
Features: +server +lua
Scripting engine: Lua 5.4
User data directory: /Users/cscheid/.local/share/pandoc
Copyright (C) 2006-2024 John MacFarlane. Web: https://pandoc.org
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is no
warranty, not even for merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
$ ./pandoc -f native -t typst
[ Para
    [ Cite
        [ Citation
            { citationId = "a-ref"
            , citationPrefix = []
            , citationSuffix = []
            , citationMode = NormalCitation
            , citationNoteNum = 1
            , citationHash = 0
            }
        ]
        [ Str "[@a-ref]" ]
    , Str "b"
    ]
]
^D
@a-refb
$ ./pandoc -f markdown -t native
[@a-ref]b
^D
[ Para
    [ Cite
        [ Citation
            { citationId = "a-ref"
            , citationPrefix = []
            , citationSuffix = []
            , citationMode = NormalCitation
            , citationNoteNum = 1
            , citationHash = 0
            }
        ]
        [ Str "[@a-ref]" ]
    , Str "b"
    ]
]

Shouldn't there be a separator there? Something like @a-ref#(/* nothing */)b.

[jgm]

Why? Does typst require some kind of separator here, and if so what?

[cscheid]

quite rare

Yes. I understand if you choose to not make the change.

FWIW, this came up organically for a Quarto user, so it's not merely a potential problem.

If you choose not to make this change, can you let me know? I will likely make this change on Quarto if you choose Pandoc not to. I do understand that for us, the .typ file is an intermediate product, while for Pandoc it is the goal of the whole process. As a result, we prefer non-idiomatic targets than having to explain the internal process to a less-experienced user.

[jgm]

I'm curious about the organic use. What was it?

[cscheid]

They wanted to write the equivalent of Figure 1b, where Figure 1 was the reference text generated by Typst's crossref infrastructure. (As it turns out, Quarto solves this class of problem with our subfloats and references to them; but the user didn't know and the general idea stands)

[jgm]

Well, that's not a particularly important use case if there's a standard way to do this that doesn't involve manually specifying the 'b'. I think my general view on this issue is that I'd like to make the typst output as idiomatic as possible, even at the cost of not handling this particular case, but that it would be even better to add code that fixes things in this rare case. One way of doing that, sketched above, would simply add a backslash. Perhaps there are some even rarer cases in which that wouldn't work. A more solid solution could be possible but would require more dramatic reorganization of the typst writer. Anyway, I'll create an issue from this discussion so we don't lose track.

[jgm]

created issue #10189