link soup

[Mark Smith]

I can appreciate that for some, this whole debate seems to be a
sidetrack and one leading to confusion and complexity. However, for a
subset of users, a footnote solution is one important step towards being
able to write papers for web output... 

@ 03:11 on 21.8.05, Yuri T. wrote:


>There really are _three_ things.  There are footnotes, endnotes, and

>bibliographic references.  Footnotes and endnotes are both usually

>marked with superscript symbols and serve essentially the same purpose

>- to provide a comment (which _may_ include a bibliographic reference

>in some writing styles).   The difference is that footnotes got at the

>bottom of the page and endnotes go in the end of the paper/book.  

>This distinction is lost on a webpage.  Additionally, I have never

>seen a paper that would use both endnotes and footnotes.  


Yes. However, its also often the case that papers/books that make heavy
use of bibliographic references, don't have footnotes and those that do,
might well do better to have side notes rather than footnotes. Not
always the case, but often. My thinking is that for HTML output, its
probably going to be inappropriate/clunky to have more than one of the
three types in a document and the extension of this (to my way of
thinking) is to have the one syntax serve all three purposes.

For caese needing two sets of "notes", maybe its easier in Markdown
writing to take on the job of hard coding sidenotes to use in addition
to literature references, than to get two distinct sets of "foot/endnote
syntaxes ?


>Bibliographic references  usually uses something other than just a

>number (e.g. "(Smith 1999)" or "[Smith99]), and the references are

>often alphabetized (which one never does with footnotes).


Numerical citations are becoming just about as popular as author/year
and both can be accomodated by the proposed syntax. As for
alphabetically sorting the reference list, two things: one has to ask if
this is necessary with dynamic linking ? In print it serves as an
assistance to finding the "link". If one wants to sort the order of the
list, this can be done with a relatively simple script. 


>I think markdown needs one solution for footnotes/endnotes and another

>one for bibliography.   You can't use the same for both, if only

>because many documents use footnotes and bibliographic references at

>the same time.  So, I think it's best to leave [^1] syntax for

>footnotes and start a separate thread on bibliographic references.


In principle, I would agree. Realistically I don't see there being room
for both. If needs be, it can always be cludged by maintaining two runs
of reference links (e.g. numbers for footnotes and "names" (maybe
author/year) for literature citations.

The real gap on the bibliography side would have to be filled by an
external app that works with Markdown syntax. Something along the lines
of BibDesk, but, for extra points, based on the Xbiblio project ?

mark.