Re: Possible method for adding footnotes.

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Toby A Inkster wrote:
>
> There have been one or two suggestions posted to this list for possible 
> methods of adding foot-/end-/side-note support to XHTML.
> 
> One was to add a <note/> element that works like this:
> 
>   <p>
>     C. S. Lewis suggested <note>This was in a letter to a young
>     fan</note> that his Narnian chronicles had biblical roots.
>   </p>
> 
> The disadvantage of this would be that a user agent without note support 
> would render the note inline as [...]

This is not really an important disadvantage, since it is trivial for an
XHTML2 UA to support such a <note/> element at a basic level (simply hide
its content).

This is one of the advantages of XHTML2 not having to be backwards
compatible: we can introduce elements that cannot be ignored.


> My suggestion is an inline element which could be used as follows:
> 
>   <p>
>     C. S. Lewis suggested <note href="#fanletter">*</note> that his
>     Narnian chronicles had biblical roots.
>   </p>
>   [snip]
>   <section>
>     <h>Notes</h>
>     <ol>
>       <li id="fanletter">This was in a letter to a young fan</li>
>     </ol>
>   </section>
> 
> A user agent supporting the <note /> element should replace it with a 
> number -- the first note on the page with a 1, etc... like with footnotes. 

That is significantly harder to author, generate, style, and maintain.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
"meow"                                          /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 7 February 2003 09:42:33 UTC