Footnotes, anyone...?

Other than that, has anybody tried Feetnotes? Is it working? I’ve only used it in a testing environment, so if anybody puts it into a live site I’d love to see it.

I’ve now also installed and tried Feetnotes on my current project site. And it’s working just as you’d expect it to do. Actually it’s a bit simpler than Footnotes to work with since you don’t have to manually number your footnotes. But all in all you got two very good solutions here, that’s for sure!

So thanks to you also, Brent. 😊

Mats

Yep, there’s no arguing that Feetnotes is simpler for content publishers to use, though I see advantages and disadvantages of both. One factor that would lead someone to choose one over the other, for instance, is whether you want your site developer to have exclusive control where the footnotes are displayed (Feetnotes, since the location is determined in the template), if you need to give a measure of control to your content publishers (Footnotes, where the publisher places the {ref} tags).

But this isn’t a contest of whose footnotes are larger than the other guy’s. Choice is a grand thing!

But this isn’t a contest of whose footnotes are larger than the other guy’s. Choice is a grand thing!

I agree.

Here’s one simple system that does work.

Go to the template tab and locate the global variable link.

Create as many notes and anchors as you think you will need. For me this is 10 … but in truth I never use more than about 5-6 footnotes on a single page.

Each note should be formatted like so.

<sup><a href="#note1" class="homelink">1</a></sup>

Each anchor should be formatted like so:

<a name="note1" class="smaller"></a>

The classes above refer to how you want the footnote to be styled when referenced in the body copy (homelink) and how you want the note to appear at the bottom of the page (smaller). This styling is up to you to add to your CSS.

When you have a footnote to mark in body copy, simply insert the note:

This is some body copy.  Suppose I want to footnote a particular word{note1} like so. Then I want to continue to talk on and on and on again.

At the bottom of the page do something like this:

<b>Note</b>
{anchor1} 1.  Blah blah. Some copy representing footnote 1 goes here.
{anchor2} 2.  Blah blah. Some copy representing footnote 2 goes here.

This system is simple and works for me. You can see it illustrated on my site here:

http://www.firewhite.com/services/demand_planning/

What This Does Clicking on a footnote in the body copy takes you to a note that appears at the end of the page. Your reader would have to manually scroll back up to the place where you where reading after you finish reading the bottom of the page. This mimics behavior in the offline world. This system could be easily extended to take someone back to where they were reading. However, I for one think this is overkill.

Um, msdirect, your method is no different than doing this on a static HTML page. How would content publishers utilize your method? Do your content publishers create a template to add information to the site? The point of the plugins is that they can be used dynamically, on any content, including weblog entries, not just content that is hardcoded in a template. Using the User-Defined Globals is no different than just putting that code directly in your template, and requires you to manually code it each time.

Your reader would have to manually scroll back up to the place where you where reading after you finish reading the bottom of the page. This mimics behavior in the offline world. This system could be easily extended to take someone back to where they were reading. However, I for one think this is overkill.

A) This isn’t the offline world. A “page” is not constrained to a 6” x 8” area. If online reading was mimicked in the real world, we wouldn’t be using books, but scrolls, and you’d have to wind the scroll back to where you started.

B) It’s pretty essential that an online footnote provide some mechanism to return to the spot that referenced it. The browser will automatically do this by using the back button, but that’s not very intuitive, hence the implementation John Gruber devised, that Mr. Wilson and I both utilized.

Different strokes for different folks.

Your plugin is wicked cool but may not be right for everyone is all … For my purposes, it would require that I break down content that today resides in a single entry into multiple entries, so that the “return” functionality that takes you back from the note at the bottom of the page would work. Few people click through to the copy on the bottom of the page but many more people are referred into my site via search engines and use search on my site when it is up and running (right now it isn’t). So there is a trade off here in that your plug in would require that I break down my pages into multiple entries, something that would not display pages in the ideal way given how search engines work. In my humble opinion.

I agree with you that online and offline media are completely different. There hasn’t been widespread adoption of your method - or Gruber’s method - of footnoting - yet. But it would be good to see it get traction.

Just a note that my plugin can be used anywhere on the page, regardless of whether the content is from one entry, two, or static HTML. Any {ref1} will automatically link to any {fn1}{/fn1} on the same page, and they can be within different instances of the footnotes plugin tag.

As for lack of adoption, I think that the implementation for footnotes is less obvious than what most people have done since the mid-90’s when they need to show a snip of content that is footnote-ish, and that’s a small pop-up window. So I don’t see it ever taking hold in a large way, but, especially for academic publishing, any clean inline method is preferrable, whatever way people choose to implement it.

Updated the Footnotes plugin to allow full url links to your footnotes, for more fluid integration between multi and single entry pages.

I saw the Footnotes Mod and was intrigued. I am looking to implement footnotes in the EE Wiki. Am not sure whether the MOD will work on the Wiki and am concerned about potential conflicts with the Wiki Categories. Looking at WikiPedia, the use a

Looking for a way to use similar tagging to annotate an online manual.

I believe my old footnotes plugin should work in the Wiki, though I have not tried it. Mr. Wilson’s Feetnotes plugin would probably be better suited to the task since my plugin gives publishers the ability to determine where to place the footnotes. With Mr. Wilson’s, you could put the Feetnotes code in your Wiki templates and give it a fixed location. One problem–his syntax for using the plugin will conflict with how the Wiki creates links between articles, so the plugin would need to be modified to not use the [[double bracket]] syntax that would be parsed by the Wiki as an article link.

My feetnotes plugin makes my pagination disappear. There’s no output whatsoever. I’ve tried movie the feetnote tags around, but then other things (like the comment and categories links) disappeared too. What am I doing wrong?

{exp:weblog:category_heading weblog="{my_weblog}"}
{category_name} {if category_description}{category_description}{/if}
{/exp:weblog:category_heading}

{exp:feetnotes}
{feetnotes:item id="entry_id"}

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="{my_weblog}" orderby="date" sort="desc" limit="1" disable="member_data|trackbacks"}

<h1>{title}</h1>

{summary}

{body}

{if extended}<a href="http://{title_permalink=site/entry}" title="Read the full version">Read the rest of this entry</a> »{/if}

{feetnotes:list}




{date_heading}{entry_date format='%l, %d %F %Y'}{/date_heading}

Posted in: {categories}<a href="http://{path=site/index}">{category_name}</a> {/categories} 

{if allow_comments}  <a href="http://{url_title_path=">Comments</a> {comment_total}{/if}
{if allow_comments == FALSE}Commenting has expired for this particular entry.{/if}


{paginate}previous entries {pagination_links}{/paginate}

{/feetnotes:item}

{/exp:weblog:entries}

{/exp:feetnotes}

Updated the Footnotes plugin to allow full url links to your footnotes, for more fluid integration between multi and single entry pages.

Damn, I get a 404.

Any chance you can upload it somewhere? I’m very interested in this one. :D

Ha, I went looking for my own plugin for someone, and found this old thread. I had thought it was in the repository, but it’s not. Posting here for other stumblers.

Is there any hope for an EE2 appearance? I LOVE this plugin.