link soup

[Mark Smith]

@ 22:43 on 22.8.05, Mark Lawrence wrote:


>Literature citations are different in that they are not themselves  

>content, but references to content elsewhere.


Not to my mind, at least in this context.

There would likely be an external link to a source for the citation in
the generated "footnote":

    ....as previously reported [^Jobs and Gates 1984], the nature of...
    
    [^Jobs and Gates 1984]: Blah blah blah. [LinkToOnlineSource][]

but the purpose of the Markdown syntax would be to make what is
essentially (on a web page at least) just a footnote with a particular
style. No ?

Looked at from another point of view: If any two forms have to be used
within a single document, then (at least according to Tufte) one of them
should be sidenotes. That leads to the conclusion that, **if** there is
a second syntax, it makes "input sense" to devote it to sidenotes.

Acknowledged, there is some "heritage" associated with literature
citations, that makes them intuitively the odd man out of the group, but
that's less relevant (IMO) than the inevitable nature of the output and
good document design.

mark.