Subject: [xml2rfc] Footnotes?

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2012 10:41:02 -0400 (EDT)

Maybe I missed it in reading through all the doc, but is there any way to do a
footnote? (If not, I guess I can manually float it down to the end of the
section, if I'm using the output type where each section starts at the head of
a new page.)

Oh, while I'm sending this, let me add that it's mildly irritating that in the
initial author element, one is only allowed a single initial, i.e. I can't do:

  <author fullname="J. Noel Chiappa" initials="J.N." surname="Chiappa">

As usual, the world is prejudiced against those of us who use their middle
names! Vaguely expected of paper forms, but computers should be more flexible.

And I too was bitten by not being able to have Appendixes before the References
(as are several IDs co-workers are working on). Please, let authors figure out
which ordering works best for their document.

       Noel

PS: Please CC me on any replies, I'm not on the mailing list.

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:04:54 +0200

> section, if I'm using the output type where each section starts at the head of

No, there is no footnote support (and I believe there shouldn't be one, 
as we're trying to move away from page-oriented design).

>    <author fullname="J. Noel Chiappa" initials="J.N." surname="Chiappa">

I don't see anything wrong with the above (well, except for missing 
whitespace between "J." and "N.").

> which ordering works best for their document.

I'd like the documents to be consistent; is there a particular reason 
why the default is a problem?

> PS: Please CC me on any replies, I'm not on the mailing list.

Ack, but please consider joining.

Best regards, Julian

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From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2012 11:20:46 -0500

On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]> wrote:
> No, there is no footnote support (and I believe there shouldn't be one, as
> we're trying to move away from page-oriented design).

Er, why?  I mean, with e-readers there's still something close to a
page, and footnotes in books still get rendered properly.  It's only
with web pages that this is not true -- a major use case, for sure,
but even if we do get rid of pagination for the HTML rendering, the
footnotes could get collected into one section at the end.  Indeed,
<cref>s, if not made to render inline, get grouped together and
approximate footnotes.

Nico
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