Open-ended page ranges

There’s been a request on pandoc-discuss regarding open-ended page ranges:

Is it possible to have pandoc-citeproc interpret a locator like 12ff as multiple pages? Currently, I get p. 12ff while pp. 12ff would be correct.

I don’t think there’s support for that at the moment, right? Also, I don’t think 1.1 will add support for this yet, correct? Or, am I just missing something here?

Arguably, open-ended page-ranges are not really useful for readers, but in some traditions, it’s rather common. In German language academia you’ll often even find that page-ranges are always shortened to starting page + “ff.”. So, “215-243” will be “215ff.” (When writing in German, it’s actually not a big deal since the abbreviation for “Seite” and “Seiten” is in both cases “S.”).

Both citeproc-js and pandoc-citeproc seem to have some support for this already. A locator “215-” will be interpreted as an open-ended range, and the label will be adjusted accordingly, so in citeproc-js the result is “pp. 215-”, with pandoc-citeproc it’s “pp. 215”.

I suggest we should add some support for this. Some possibilities:

• a new term psqq à la biblatex that could be used with open-ended page-ranges.
• a new term psq, and a new option to support “12-13”=>“12f.” like behavior.
• a new option to support unconditional collapsing of page-ranges into first page + “ff.”: “12-25” => “12ff.”

Thought? @jgm @cormacrelf @fbennett @andras-simonyi @bdarcus @bwiernik @georgd

[bdarcus]

• Add a new attribute ~@use-psqq-with-open-ended-page-range~ @use-following-pages-with-open-ended-page-range (the naming might still be improved 😉); if true, open-ended page ranges are rendered as “starting-page” + “ff.”

Rather than a boolean with a specific name, how about a more general name with a specific value; say @page-open-range-format="following", with idea open ranges in general might just default to 1900-.

[denismaier]

following-page?

No please. That would be way too obvious.