link soup

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2005-08-22 à 12:34, Mark Smith a écrit :


> I assume that you are thinking about re-purposing footnote input  

> rather

> than the suitability of sidenotes for the proposed syntax per se ?


Yes.


> I was thinking about sidenotes and came to the provisional personal

> conclusion that they are the least good fit (of the various

> foot/end/side note types) with "endnote syntax". They won't normally

> need any two-way "linking" (thanks to their advantageous positioning)

> and there are already some simple-enough pure-css solutions.


The problem is that this doesn't degrade too well when you remove the  
style sheet, like in a feed reader. So you need to convert them back  
to footnotes for the syndication feed.

The way I see it, footnotes, sidenotes, endnotes, literature  
references are all the same. They are all notes embedded in the  
middle of a longer document. What changes is the way they are  
displayed, but making a different syntax for each would be silly. No?

All you need is the right parser to format your text the way you  
like, which could be a modified version of Markdown. Take this input  
for instance:

     Some text with a book reference. [^Smith 2005]

     [^Smith 2005]:
         "Title" by John Smith, Journal of XXX, July, 2005.


Formatted as a footnote, it could look like this:

     Some text with a book reference. ¹
     ----------------
     1.  "Title" by John Smith, Journal of XXX, July, 2005. ↩


Formatted as a sidenote, it could look like this:

     Some text with a book reference.            "Title" by John
                                                 Smith, Journal of
                                                 XXX, July, 2005.


Formatted as a numbered literature reference, it could look like this:

     Some text with a book reference. [1]
     ----------------
     1.  "Title" by John Smith, Journal of XXX, July, 2005. ↩


Formatted as a named literature reference, it could look like this:

     Some text with a book reference. [Smith 2005]
     ----------------
     Smith 2005
     :   "Title" by John Smith, Journal of XXX, July, 2005. ↩


These are four examples of different ways to parse the "footnote"  
syntax. The idea is to use the right parser in the right context. It  
isn't that hard to use the same syntax for all these things.

One problem is when you want both literature references and  
footnotes, in which case you need a parser that can differentiate  
both, which implies a special syntax. But that could be implemented  
as a subset of the footnote syntax:

     Some text with a book reference. [^^Smith 2005]

     [^^Smith 2005]:
         "Title" by John Smith, Journal of XXX, July, 2005.

And with the right parser it could work. All this with a decent  
fallback (footnotes) if you return to standard Markdown.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/