Re: Basic citations: should default citation style have a name and style code?

[Joost Kremers]

On Sun, Jan 14 2024, William Denton wrote:
> On Sunday, January 14th, 2024 at 00:08, William Denton
> <william@williamdenton.org> wrote:
>
>> While we're talking about citations, I'm stuck on something else. If I run
>> "C-c C-x @" to insert a citation into a file, I'm shown a list of 
>> bibliography
>> entries and I can go up and down and hit RET on any I chose. That works well.
>> But---the prompt says, "Key (empty input exits)." What makes empty input? I
>> can't figure it out. I've never seen that phrase before. I can't make it exit
>> properly---I either keep adding citations or C-g or DEL cancels it---so I
>> can't make the function work. If anyone knows, I can try making a patch to
>> make it clearer.
>
> As so often happens, a few minutes after sending an email I think I found the
> answer: it's seems to be a problem with the completion mechanism Ivy.
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/q/77489325/854346
>
> I ran "emacs -Q" and I see how it works there, with RET closing things off,
> which makes sense.
>
> Last year I looked at Vertico and thought about trying it out, but since
> everything was working fine, I didn't. Now I've found a reason, I guess. Ah,
> Emacs!

You'll run into the same issue with Vertico, I suspect. Completion mechanisms
such as Ivy and Vertico tend to default to the first visible candidate when you
just hit RET, not to the current input. This is so that you don't need to
complete the top candidate, you can just hit a few characters and if the
candidate you want is at the top, you can just hit RET.

A consequence of this is that you cannot use RET to select the empty input. Both
Ivy and vertico provide a command for that, though. I don't know which command
Ivy uses and to which it is bound, but the docs should be able to tell you.

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments