Re: Re[2]: Proposal for XHTML 2.0: The <footnote> element

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Alexander Savenkov wrote:
>
> Again and again, why do you people need a special element to markup such
> cases? http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-lists - see how Ian did that.

The way I did it in the CSS3 Lists spec is to lie about the semantics of
my document: I used the class attribute to change a paragraph from being
part of the main flow of text to being a note (footnote/sidenote) element.
This is an abuse of the class attribute, as it means it cannot work with
user or UA stylesheets (since class attribute values are non-normative).

I would very much like to have a note-level element. I do not know if we
need different elements for sidenotes, footnotes, endnotes and so forth,
or if we just need one element, <note>, which can then be styled as any of
the above using CSS, but I do think that we need an element for this.

I also think that notes should be allowed to appear anywhere, and be
allowed to contain any Flow content.

For example:

   <p>
    The cat
    <note>
     <h>The Cat</h>
     <p>
      The cat was still very cute, despite having:
      <ul>
       <li> lived many years </li>
       <li> lost his right ear </li>
       <li> fought many battles </li>
      </ul>
     </p>
    </note>
    sat on the mat.
   </p>

...could be styled as:

   note { content: footnote; } /* proposed for CSS3 */

...or:

   note { float: right; border: solid; margin: 1em; padding: 1em; }

...or any number of other possibilities.

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

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:22:53 UTC