[Bug 11217] New: Footnotes I find it hard to believe, that even today, HTML does not include a specific element for including notes within the text. Notes are necessary for the full argumentation in the text without still belonging to the main text itself, and they includ

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11217

           Summary: Footnotes I find it hard to believe, that even today,
                    HTML does not include a specific element for including
                    notes within the text. Notes are necessary for the
                    full argumentation in the text without still belonging
                    to the main text itself, and they includ
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Other
               URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#top
        OS/Version: other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML Canvas 2D Context (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: contributor@whatwg.org
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


Specification: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete.html#top

Comment:
Footnotes

I find it hard to believe, that even today, HTML does not include a specific
element for including notes within the text. Notes are necessary for the full
argumentation in the text without still belonging to the main text itself, and
they include citations to sources and to the works of other authors,

In traditional publishing, these are usually reproduced as footnotes or
endnotes, occasionally even as margin notes. The note itself is a _structural_
element, independent of its typographical representation, and as such
definitively would need a _structural_ element of its own. In the section
"Footnotes" there are examples of how to represent notes usign HTML. These
examples are all focused on the way, how to produce visual effects that look
like footnotes/endnotes/margin notes. None of these examples goes to any way
of solving the problem of presenting notes _structurally_ within a HTML
document.

Footnotes are not going to disappear just because IT specialists do not use
them. A major part of the legal, social and humanistic professions do use
them, and the lack of a corresponding HTML element will have a strong adverse
effect on the useability of HTML as a document representation format.

Best Wishes,

Harri Kiiskinen

Posted from: 130.232.37.20

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Received on Thursday, 4 November 2010 12:35:42 UTC