user-definable [was: link soup]

[Sam Angove]

John Gruber wrote:

> However, what I'm not sure about at all is the HTML markup that

> should be generated to represent a note.  [...]

 >

> Right now on DF, I'm using markup like this:

> 

>    <sup id='fnref1-2005-07-20'><a href="#fn1-2005-07-20">1</a></sup>



Is there any way we can get output which is fairly easy for the end user 
to change? A callback function for replacing footnote references, maybe, 
and another for appending the notes to the document.

I just think this might be better than worrying too much about a 
specific HTML output which almost no-one will be completely happy with, 
and opens it up for people wanting inline notes with JavaScript voodoo, 
margin notes etc. We're already going to need some way to pass a 
document identifier if Markdown is going to play nicely with all of the 
various blogging systems, let alone in all of the other situations 
people are using it; customizing the output completely could be an 
extension of that.

I'll probably be modifying my copy of PHP-Markdown regardless, but it'd 
be nice for it to be *easy*. :)

On that note, maybe it'd be better just to say that "[^id]"-style 
references are reserved for footnotes, but leave the actual 
transformation to a separate-but-related script. A plugin kind of thing...