- From: David Walbert <dwalbert@learnnc.org>
- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:20:02 -0500
On Oct 31, 2006, at 9:30 AM, James Graham wrote: > I think and distinction between footnotes, sidenotes and endnotes > is basically presentational and whilst we should try to ensure that > markup+CSS can create all three appearances we shouldn't treat them > distinctly. Footnotes and endnotes are identical in content in the context of a print document and I am not certain how they'd differ even presentationally on a web page, so yes, I think those can be considered identical in terms of markup. "Sidenotes," though, is ambiguous. If the term refers to footnotes that happen to be placed beside the text, then yes, they're identical semantically to footnotes. But "sidenotes" may also refer to "pull quotes" or "callouts" -- some small piece of text to be highlighted rather than additional explanatory information of the sort that would appear in a sidebar or footnote. Or, if "sidenote" refers to what is usually called a "sidebar," then we're talking about something that is both more extensive than the typical footnote and of greater importance relative to the main text -- its position on the side of the page is rather than at the bottom is not merely presentational but is indicative of the weight of the content. Moreover, a callout or sidebar is not a numbered or marked reference and need not be referred from a precise location within the text -- whereas a footnote or endnote relates to a specific word, sentence, or paragraph, a sidebar/callout/pullquote relates more vaguely to a more general section of text, or in the case of some sidebars, to the full article. So while markup for footnotes/endnotes could be standardized fairly easily (in as much as writing standards is ever easy), I don't even know where I would begin to define sidenotes semantically. As I've used them in print and on the web, they'd need to relate to (1) a header, and therefore to the section of text underneath it; or (2) a paragraph, list, or other defined block of text. But a sidebar might need to contain block-level formatting (and even multiple paragraphs and potentially headers), which means it couldn't be placed inside one of those elements. I don't know how many people would actually use magazine-style sidebars and callouts on the web -- I would, and probably a lot of newspaper and magazine publishers would, if there were a convenient way to do it. (I already do use pullquotes, but with some complicated markup to make them, I hope, accessible and semantically meaningful.) On the other hand lots of web authors do and would use footnotes/ endnotes. So I am not sure how much effort it would be worth putting into markup for sidebars/callouts. ____ David Walbert LEARN NC dwalbert at learnnc.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/attachments/20061031/ac3e943d/attachment.htm>
Received on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 07:20:02 UTC