In some publications, footnotes are essential, and I am happily using them with Prince. But they could be improved in several ways.

1. Footnotes spanning over pages

Better this:

text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text text text
text text(1) text    | text text text text
___________________  | text text text text
1. A very long       | __________________
footnote bla bla     | bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla      | bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla      | bla bla bla bla.
                     |
       page 6        |        page 7

... than this:

text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text text text
text text text text  | text text.
text text text text  | __________________
text text text text  | 1. A very long
text text(1) text    | footnote bla bla
text text text text  | bla bla bla bla
text text text text  | bla bla bla bla
text text text text  | bla bla bla bla
text text text text  | bla bla bla bla
text text text text  | bla bla bla bla.
                     |
       page 6        |        page 7

2. Inline footnotes

Good, it's in the roadmap:



Edit: A property to style the inline footnotes may be necessary. For instance:

inline-footnote-separator: " \002014 "

Result: (1) First footnote — (2) Second footnote — (3) Third footnote


3. Multiple footnote areas

For instance, this hamlet work has two footnote areas : http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1337/hamlet.png

Some books have two footnote areas, one for "inline footnotes" and one for "block footnotes". For example:

• A scholar work: http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1751/exegesis.png
• A famous medieval work: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3847/sumi.png

Critical editions use multiple footnote areas and I think everyone can feel the beauty of the mentioned examples (the "wow" effect).

Thomas

Edited 3 Nov 2009 by thomas

Prince has been very receptive to requests. I believe the multiple named flow areas is already in the roadmap. This will allow one area for cross-references and another area for footnotes. Hopefully this can be used to allow for center column cross-references. Sidebars already exist.

Footnotes spanning pages should only happen on facing pages.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

I agree!



Named flows have been removed from the last CSS3 draft, so I do not think it will be implemented. And I do not want a footnote area and a hack with named flows, I want two footnote areas.



No, this is wrong. In printed books, you never have a footnote reference on a page and the footnote on the next page. One thing I dislike with prince is when you have two footnotes numbered with "1" on the same page:

text text text | text(1) text
text text text | text text.
text text text | ____________
text text text | 1. first
text text text | footnote first
text(1) text   | first first
text text text | 1. second 
text text text | footnote

Since you are making Bible, I pick an example you will like: a footnote spanning two pages which are not facing each other in the KJ Bible: p321, p322.

Your last example shows that you sometimes have to break a rule. Footnote 2 is near the end of page. But if all of footnote 2 were included then the text calling the footnote would not be on the same page. So this is definitely in the category of you can break a rule after you know what the rule really is.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Oh OK, so we agree: I was talking of footnotes spanning over twol pages only in the case when there is not enough space for the whole footnote at the bottom of the page. Of course, there is absolutely no reason not to put the whole footnote on the page if it is possible. (Currently, Prince is not able to split a footnote when necessary.)

Good suggestions, I'll add these to the roadmap. They are not easy to implement though, so they won't show up overnight.

Thanks a lot Mike! I am glad to hear this.

(By the way, I think some assumptions could be made to make the implementation easier. For instance, assuming that the maximum number of footnote areas is four—two on the bottom, one in the left margin, one in the right margin—makes sense.)

Thomas

Add one center column for cross-references.
I always add at least one more for each assumed area. So I would allow three at bottom.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

May I know if any of these improvements/suggestions are in place?

Edited 26 Jun 2019 by shivaram

Footnotes can break across multiple pages, yes.

ok, thank you!