Re: Footnote discussions

Is there a significant difference between a footnote and an annotation,
other than the positioning?  If there is, I'm missing it :)

Wouldn't a hint to the client that a particular area on the page (foot,
side, wherever) was reserved for rendering annotations suffice?

Rob

On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 7:31 AM, Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com> wrote:

> How the markup should look is an interesting question. Lots of "classic"
> XML/SGML vocabularies have a footnote element that essentially serves as
> both marker and reference:
>
> <para>Call me Ishmael.<footnote><para>This is a
> footnote</para></footnote></para>
>
> When rendered, the footnote element is moved somewhere, and a reference
> left in its place.
>
> The PDF formatters Prince and AntennaHouse can do something similar today
> with HTML footnotes:
>
> <p>Call me Ishmael.<span class="footnote">This is a footnote</span></p>
>
> They use CSS to move the footnote and generate the references using CSS
> counters and some non-standard pseudo-elements:
>
> span.footnote { float: footnote }
> span.footnote::footnote-call { content: counter(footnote); vertical-align:
> super; }
> span.footnote::footnote-marker { content: counter(footnote) '. '; }
>
> This leads to content model problems, as often footnotes may have
> sectioning or block elements inside them (like blockquote, div, etc.) which
> are not valid inside paragraphs.
>
> We've also run into problems with implementing footnotes using CSS
> regions. It's easy enough to move the footnote element somewhere else, but
> CSS has not defined ways of leaving markers behind to serve as the callout.
>
> Separating the note and the reference has its own issues, as you have to
> essentially create all the links yourself, and it seems a bit arbitrary
> where to put the note content itself.
>
> I'd lean towards having a note element that could be embedded at the point
> of reference, with a rather expansive content model. A noteref element
> would be optional, for the case where there are multiple references to the
> same note. But CSS would need to address the issue of leaving a reference
> when the note element was moved to somewhere else in the document. Such a
> pseudo-element (one possible proposal) would be more generally useful, with
> sidebars, images, and other such content.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rob Sanderson
Information Standards Advocate
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford, CA 94305