Re: New display value "footnote"

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Christoph [x-unknown] Päper wrote:
> 
> I'd like to propose a new value for the display property: "footnote".

The WG is considering (and has been for several months now) possible
footnote solutions.

The simple 'display:footnote' idea has one big problem, which is that
it does not (easily) cater for the more common case of trying to make
an attribute value into a footnote.

My personal favourite proposal so far would require two rules to
create a footnote: one to create the actual footnote and one to change
the content to have a link to the footnote. If the <fn> element is to
be turned into a footnote, it would look like:

   @media print {
      fn { content: footnote; }
      fn::footnote { content: contents; }
   }

...where 'content:contents' means that the pseudo-element's contents are
the children of the element, and 'content:footnote' is a shorthand for 

   content: counter(footnote, footnotes);

...where 'footnote' is an automatic counter incremented for each
footnote (like the list-item counter is incremented for each
list-item) and 'footnotes' is a symbolic list-style-type typically
used in footnotes (*, +, ++, etc).

This allows the model to be easily applied to attributes:

   [title]::after { content: footnote; }
   [title]::footnote { content: attr(title); }

...and is very customisable:

   fn { content: ' [' counter(footnote, decimal) ']'; }
   fn::footnote-marker { content: counter(footnote, decimal) '.'; }

..(where '::footnote-marker' is the equivalent of '::list-marker' but for
footnotes).

Unfortunately this proposal has one big disadvantage.

It requires two rules to specify a footnote.

And I don't really see any sensible way of solving that.

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

Received on Thursday, 19 September 2002 12:14:55 UTC