Re: [css-books] Re: [css3-gcpm] Complex Footnotes

On Sun, 2013-10-27 at 09:09 +0700, James Clark wrote:

> 
> Are footnote separators also an issue?  For example, in the Pepys
> case, there's a footnote separator (a centered horizontal rule)
> between the two footnote areas, which occurs only if both footnote
> areas are non-empty; however, one could also imagine a separator
> between the body and the footnotes that occurs only if at least one of
> the footnote areas was non-empty.


To some extent we have to distinguish between the ability to reproduce
historical documents exactly and the need to publish modern documents.

However, a separator between two different levels or flows of footnote
seems to me as important as a separator between footnotes and text.

For a critical edition of a text one might envision the original printed
pages as solid objects, with a single level of footnotes added in the
new edition, annotating the page. A markup and style model that followed
this world-view would probably be a good fit. Example:
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Hearne-LelandItinerary-Vol1/pages/069/

For scientific or religious texts one sometimes sees multiple flows of
footnotes intermingled, for example using roman letters to number
cross-references), numerals for glosses or explanations of uncommon
terms, and perhaps even some third set of markers for exegetical notes.
In these sorts of intermingled case usually only a single separator is
needed.

http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Geneva/pages/Geneva-p524/ has an example of
two kinds of intermingled footnotes (done as margin notes that wrap
around the main content area) - I think the numbered notes are to the
corresponding verse number, although it's not entirely clear to me. I do
have other examples where footnotes show a verse number (or range). Here
the footnotes are distinguished by position - aligned with the marker
where possible, visible in this example on the right-hand side of the
page - text size and font.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml

Received on Sunday, 27 October 2013 04:57:14 UTC