Re: Proposal for XHTML 2.0: The <footnote> element

Lorenzo De Tomasi:
> on 15-01-2003 1:16, Herr Christian Wolfgang Hujer at
>> Am Mittwoch, 15. Januar 2003 00:29 schrieb Jonas Jørgensen:
>>
>>> I hereby propose for inclusion in XHTML 2.0 a <footnote> element for
>>> marking up footnotes.

This, as well as concerning properties for CSS (e.g. display:footnote), is
being suggested every once in a while. IIRC it has even ben mentioned in
either HTML+ or HTML 3.0 draft.

>>> <p>There exists no element for marking up footnotes<footnote>A footnote
>>> is a note of reference or comment at the foot of a page.</footnote> in
>>> the current XHTML 2.0 draft.</p>

Note that in a UA without <footnote/>-support this renders as "[...]
footnotesA [...]".

>> But I'd not call if footnote - I think it should be more generic since
one
>> might want to use if for the bibliography or glossary as well.

Those are better put separately in an appropriate document. This is then
linked with rel="glossary".

> In this way note must contain <p>, <l>, <ul>, <ol>, <a>, <object>, etc.,
> because a note can be a full document itself...

A footnote in general does not contain more than one paragraph, thus I'd
only allow the Text Module elements inside.

>> <l>In reality<note type="glossary">

The type attribute should be reserved fpr MIME types, rel/rev are perfectly
suitable here.

> Probably the better way is to choose some default styles for the most used
> types for the browsers:

In HTML???ß You have to have meant CSS.

Ceterum censeo footnotes are to be used with paged media only. (In the
traditional sense of "placed at the end of the page/document".)

Christoph Päper

Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2003 20:41:56 UTC