Footnotes

[Michel Fortin]

(I forgot to add this to my last message)

Back in April, John Gruber said we cannot include footnotes into 
Markdown...


> Because I don't think it's possible to generate HTML output that 

> everyone would agree upon. But I could be wrong.

>

> [...]

>

> One technical issue is that you need unique identifiers for the anchor 

> references, so that when you click footnote 1, it takes you to where 

> that footnote lives on page. At first thought, you might think this is 

> easy, just number them: [some examples here]. This works for an 

> individual article, but it doesn't work for an index page -- a page 

> that might contain multiple footnoted articles.


I think you are right that it is impossible to generate HTML output 
that everyone will agree upon.

*But*, Markdown (or more likely an extension of it like PHP Markdown 
Extra) could provide support for different kind of footnotes with 
"configurable output". That would mean essentially:

1.	A suffix/prefix for the footnote id, which in the case of a weblog
	should be different for each entry on an index page.
2.	A class for the `<sup>` or `<a>` element used as a footnote marker.
3.	Options about how to output the footnotes.

The hard part here is 1 because it need integration with the software 
running the web site. But such integration is not always needed either.

I think it is possible to do it right.


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