Le 2008-04-21 à 8:19, Ian Hickson a écrit :
On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Michel Fortin wrote:
Interesting. If I understand well, this CSS proposal would allow a
note
inserted in the middle of a paragraph to become a footnote. For
instance
this:
<p>This paragraph has a footnote<footnote>This is a footnote</
footnote>.</p>
could be presented like this (where 1 is presumably superscript and
linked to the footnote):
This paragraph has a footnote1.
______________
1. This is a footnote.
That'd very interesting. But the markup is poor for backward
compatibility and makes it difficult to include more than one
paragraph
in a note. So I'm going to propose an improvement to this markup.
(For the next example: <fn> = footnote; <fnref> = footnote
reference.)
What is needed to solve the backward compatibility problem is a
second
way of indirection, so that the footnote can be placed elsewhere.
This
is the first piece of the puzzle:
<p>This paragraph has a footnote<fnref for="my-footnote"></
fnref>.</p>
<fn id="my-footnote">
<p>This footnote can contain block-level elements!</p>
</fn>
In this example, a reference to the footnote is found in the
paragraph,
and the footnote content is elsewhere in the document. The browser
would
be in charge of numbering the marker correctly (or not, if the
stylesheet says so) and to put the referenced footnote in a list with
the other footnotes in the order they are reference.
Notice the empty content of <fnref>? That's substitution content for
backward compatibility: if you put a link to the footnote within the
<fnref> element, when displaying things as footnote the actual
content
is substituted by the marker, but footnote-unaware browsers will show
the link. In the previous case, the fallback content for the
reference
marker could have been:
<sup><a href="#my-footnote">1</a></sup>
Since footnotes are referenced and reordered, you're free to place
them
wherever you want. If you care about backward compatibility, you
should
put them all together at the end of your article and there you have
your
list of footnotes. Footnotes without reference are considered to be
referenced from where they are in the source. Or if you want them
to be
styled as sidenotes, just put the notes before or after the paragraph
they relate to in the source, or even inline inside paragraphs
(although
inline footnotes should be restricted to inline content), and hide
the
marker.
The last piece of the backward compatibility puzzle is the <fnl>
(footnote list) element. This element is optional, but if present,
preceding footnotes inside the same sectioning element will be
relocated
inside this element. <fnl> would be styled as an ordered list, and
its
list items would be footnote elements (<fn>).
<p>This paragraph has a footnote<fnref for="my-footnote"
<sup><a href="#my-footnote">1</a></sup></fnref>.</p>
<fnl>
<fn id="my-footnote">
<p>This footnote can contain block-level elements!</p>
</fn>
</fnl>
I suggest that footnotes be relocated at the end of the first
<article>
element, or to the first <fnl> element following them in the
source. It
goes without saying that footnotes already inside <fnl> stay where
they
are, although they should be reordered in the order they are
referred to
in the text.
At this point, why not simplify the markup and remove the <fnref>? And
turn the <fnl> and <fn> into a <section> and some <div>s or
something and
you have backwards compatible markup that already does everything we
need
without sacrificing any of the stylability...
The idea of relocating the content is that one may specify in some
form from a stylesheet how the notes should be rendered -- sidenotes,
footnotes, endnotes would all use the same markup with a different
style. (By "relocating" I mean it should appear somewhere else in the
rendering three, not moved to another element in the DOM by the way.)
The reason I came with this somewhat complex proposal is to satisfy
the following cases which cannot be completely fulfilled with current
markup:
1. Permitting notes as actual footnotes (not endnotes) for paged media:
given some styling, the browser relocates footnotes at the end of
each
page.
2. Permitting notes with any content -- paragraphs, lists, code blocks
(<pre><code>), etc. -- to degrade gracefully as endnotes, or
sidenotes
(given proper styling and placement in the source), in current
browsers.
3. Permitting footnotes to be placed near the context they're
referenced
from when you don't care about backward compatibility (easier
editing).
4. Permitting footnotes to be rendered incrementally on paged media
when
the content is defined before the marker (or almost-incremental
if the
content of a footnote immediately follows the paragraph with its
marker).
That said, I certainly acknowledge the argument that the feature may
not be compelling enough for implementors to bother with a proposal of
this complexity, and it is possible this proposal is just a little too
complex for authors to use it without the help of some footnote markup
generator tool (diminishing the value of point 3 above). So perhaps it
should indeed be left out, even if the current state of affairs
doesn't address the above points.
Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://michelf.com/
