footnotes

In the XSL wd 2000 xxx you write in section 6.10.3 footnotes: 
"The fo:footnote flow object generates a block-area that is placed in a conditional-area 
anchored on the after edge of the region into which the fo:footnote-citation is 
distributed." 

Attached is a note: "Issue: Does it generate a block-area?!"

It would be an unlucky decision to determine at this point that all footnotes should be  
block-areas, because there are some not uncommon uses for footnotes as inline-areas, 
per example critical editions of canonical authors or the bible. I am sure, Mr. Sperberg-
McQueen could show you some typical uses of this kind of footnotes.

Another point: The way the footnote mechanism is described at the moment, I don't see 
how to produce more than one conditional region to collect footnotes. A typical use 
would be a block of (inline) footnotes with crtical variants of the text and another block 
with explanatory footnotes on the text. 

I know the features I describe look rather esoteric at first sight, but especially in critical 
editions of text used by scholars they are quite common and this editions are next to the 
commercial uses of electronic texts a larger field in which electronic texts are created 
and used as the success of the Text Encoding Initiative shows.

Regards,
Fotis Jannidis






________________________________________
Dr. Fotis Jannidis
Institut fuer Deutsche Philologie  
Schellingstr. 3/RG, 80799 Muenchen, Germany
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~jannidis

Received on Saturday, 25 March 2000 06:19:29 UTC