CSL JSON author fields with style tags is mishandled

[jblachly]

Manual states that HTML markup tags including <b> (bold), <i> (italic) and a few others may be used in BiBTeX and CSL items: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#specifying-bibliographic-data . This is concordant with CSL specification.

However, pandoc mishandles this in at least two different ways, AFAICT.

Problem 1.

When going from CSLJSON -> (Whatever), HTML tags are escaped causing them to appear in the literal output stream.

Example:

[
	{
		"id": "http://zotero.org/users/193922/items/4QRBNRNF",
		"type": "webpage",
		"title": "dhtslib",
		"URL": "https://github.com/blachlylab/dhtslib/",
		"version": "0.12.0",
		"author": [
			{
				"family": "Gregory",
				"given": "Charles Thomas"
			},
			{
				"family": "<b>Blachly</b>",
				"given": "James S"
			}
		]
	}
]

Command: pandoc --citeproc -s -f csljson csl_min.json -o csl.md

---
nocite: "[@*]"
references:
- author:
  - family: Gregory
    given: Charles Thomas
  - family: \<b>Blachly\</b>
    given: James S
  id: "http://zotero.org/users/193922/items/4QRBNRNF"
  title: dhtslib
  type: webpage
  URL: "https://github.com/blachlylab/dhtslib/"
  version: 0.12.0
---

When rendering to, say, PDF, the literal <b> is inlined because of the escape character which you can see in the Markdown output, above.

(Side-note on a separate bug: when the output target is markdown, the standalone, nocite * bibliography isn't actually rendered, only the metadata header. In any other target format (PDF, HTML, etc.) the bibliography is rendered.)

Problem 2.

If one were to say, edit the markdown to remove the escape characters, pandoc STILL strips out the HTML tag when rendering.

$ sed -e "s/\\\</\</g;" csl.md

The rendered PDF still does not bold the author name.

Thanks in advance for taking a look at this, and thanks as always for Pandoc

jsbmbp13:~$ pandoc --version
pandoc 2.14.2
Compiled with pandoc-types 1.22, texmath 0.12.3.1, skylighting 0.11,
citeproc 0.5, ipynb 0.1.0.1
User data directory: /Users/james/.local/share/pandoc
Copyright (C) 2006-2021 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.
jsbmbp13:~$ uname -a
Darwin jsbmbp13.local 18.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.7.0: Sun Dec  1 18:59:03 PST 2019; root:xnu-4903.278.19~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

[jblachly]

Clarified title to indicate that style tags (<b> <sup> etc.) are mishandled in Author name part fields. They appear to work correctly in e.g. title fields

[jgm]

(Side-note on a separate bug: when the output target is markdown, the standalone, nocite * bibliography isn't actually rendered, only the metadata header. In any other target format (PDF, HTML, etc.) the bibliography is rendered.)

Not a bug: if you want a rendered bibliography in markdown, use markdown-citations.
Otherwise pandoc will assume you're rendering a markdown dialect that handles citations the way pandoc does, and hence doesn't need the rendered bibliography in the source.

[jgm]

See jgm/citeproc#63 for the root issue.

[jgm]

I would think that normally you'd want to handle this sort of thing in the style, rather than by encoding the boldface in the bibliography itself.

[jblachly]

I would think that normally you'd want to handle this sort of thing in the style, rather than by encoding the boldface in the bibliography itself.

in CSL, <check> blocks can't operate on author-parts (for selective formatting, which is my use case -- my CV requires my name to be bolded)

[jblachly]

See jgm/citeproc#63 for the root issue.

Regarding the root issue, I am able to use a luascript to replace e.g. author.family with metaInline [Strong ['text']] -- although this apparently only rewrites the metadata after the bibliography has been rendered; still working on figuring this part out . But, the AST correctly demonstrates that name parts can support MetaInline formatted text =)