Re: <a footnote="proposal">

Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 12 Oct 1996, Hans-Peter Stricker wrote:
>
>> I wish to propose a new attribute for the <a>-tag, which will allow to
>> display some kind of footnotes. This is how it should work:
>> The source-code  
>> 
>> <a footnote="some text">the footnoted text</a>  
>> 
>> should cause the HTML-processor to mark "the footnoted text" as
>> footnoted and to display "some text", e.g. on mouse-click. "some text"
>> might be displayed in a little pop-up window next to "the footnoted
>> text" or in the status bar.
>
>Isn't this what <A TITLE="some text" HREF="footnote.html">the footnoted
>text</a> is supposed to do? Why add a new attribute to do what is already
>in the spec?

	The base implementation of FN markup is logically a named anchor,
and the target in theory would be at the bottom of the same document,
e.g.:

	Here is a <A HREF="#makedo">MakeDo Footnote</A>.
	[...]
	<A NAME="makedo"><p>MakeDo Footnote:  A way to make do with
	 the absence of FN support in Netscape and Explorer.</p></A>

versus:

	This is an <A HREF="#frbf">FRBR</A>.
	[...]
	<FN ID="frbr"><p>FRBR:  A Frequently Requested, Basic Feature
	 which was present in the real HTML 3.0 but removed from the
	 so-called HTML 3.2 because neither Netscape nor Explorer
	 implemented it.</FN>
	 

	The NOTE element in HTML 3.0, together with it's ID and CLASS
attributes, can be used equivalently (in the clients which implemented
it, not Netscape nor Explorer), but the difference is their content has
other important kinds of information (i.e, other than footnotes), which
would be placed a appropriate points in the document).  In addition to
simple NOTEs, the CLASS attribute has "caution" and "warning" naming
conventions for regulated the browser's handling of the NOTE display.

	Neither FN nor NOTE are absolutely necessary.  They serve to
make clear the logical structure of the documents, which we old farts
of the Web consider important. :) :)

	The FN and NOTE content *can* be referenced in, and accessed
via, other documents, by using their ID values as URL fragments, but
they typically are included in the document for which they are most
relevant.
				Fote

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Received on Saturday, 12 October 1996 10:26:12 UTC