I feel the opening passages in https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/citations.html do not do justice to CSL in general, and pandoc-citeproc in particular.

Although Pandoc supports multiple ways of writing citations, we recommend you to use BibTeX databases because they work best with LaTeX/PDF output.

To my mind, this is not a fair assessment. Neither are BibTeX databases inherently “better”, nor do BibTeX or biber/BibLaTeX (the programs) necessarily do a better job processing these than pandoc-citeproc does. Sure, pandoc-citeproc has to convert BibTeX or BibLaTeX data to CSL-JSON first, but it takes great care to make this process as lossless as possible. On the other hand, if bibliographic data are already available in the CSL-JSON format (e.g., from Zotero, or similar CSL-based reference managers), there is no reason at all to convert these to BibTeX when using pandoc-citeproc.

Also, I would argue that BibTeX (the program) itself is pretty much obsolete, and its data model severely limited by modern standards. (Even https://www.ctan.org/pkg/bibtex concedes that its “facilities rapidly run out as one moves away from simple ASCII […] For more flexibility, the user is urged to consider using biber with BibLaTeX […]“)

BibTeX’s more modern successor, BibLaTeX, arguably is on a par with CSL/pandoc-citeproc in terms of their data models and processing capabilities, at least as far as the average user wishing or needing to follow a particular style guide is concerned. (I’ll readily admit that BibLaTeX allows a lot more fine-tuning, provided one has mastered that particular art. However, BibLaTeX/BibTeX is limited to one single output format, PDF, whereas no such limitations exist for CSL/pandoc-citeproc. In addition, CSL provides far more well-maintained styles implementing the recommendations of recognised style guides, including popular ones, such as Chicago, APA, MLA, etc., and more niche variants for specific journals or university departments than BibLaTeX does.)

Pandoc can process other types of bibliography databases with the utility pandoc-citeproc (https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-citeproc), but it may not render certain bibliography items correctly (especially in case of multiple authors per item).

I’d kindly ask to see the evidence for this rather sweeping claim.

As to “especially in case of multiple authors per item” -- if this is based on the perception that pandoc(-citeproc)’s output where “The first author is displayed in the format Lastname, Firstname, but the rest of authors are displayed in Firstname Lastname“ (see #703 (comment)) is somehow incorrect, I’d like to point out that this is exactly what the Chicago Manual of Style calls for.

I’d be happy if the passages in question could be reworded in order not to needlessly discourage users from working with CSL/pandoc-citeproc.

Everyone should of course feel free to report any genuine issues concerning CSL and/or pandoc-citeproc at either https://forums.zotero.org/discussions (for CSL style file issues) or at https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-citeproc/issues (for pandoc-citeproc).

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