Re: [Orgmode] Re: Footnotes and org-export, revisited

[Matthew Lundin]

I was away from my computer for a few hours and was delighted to
discover this thread. This truly is an amazing mailing list.

"Scot Becker" <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm torn.
>
> Usage 1 is harder to read.  My footnotes, for example, are very long
> compared to your example.  Of course, within emacs, this could be made
> much less severe with a little syntax coloring.  It has the advantage
> that it never gets lost or otherwise mangled without your knowledge,
> and you don't have to wonder whether you used 'kenpo' as a reference
> already, and just what might be the consequences if you did.  It's
> only liability is readability.

I would agree that anonymous foonotes are more stable and reliable for
authors, since they're embedded in the text and are easy to move
(consisting as they do of only one part). I really like how elegant
footnote markup is in LaTeX. AUCTeX solves readability problems by
allowing the user to fold footnote macros and by indenting the text of
footnotes when filling paragraphs. I wonder whether something similar
could be implemented in in org-mode (perhaps akin to the way org-mode
already hides links).

>
> Usage 2 is easier to read, which is the trend in plain-text markup
> these days. Pandoc, Multi-Markdown and ReST all do it this way,
> which isn't to say that we should. It is a little more fragile,
> since I might move the paragraph and forget its accompanying
> footnote, and it leaves the user to come up with an original
> reference name, which could get to be burdensome in if you try to
> write in an academic field which averages 3-5 footnotes per page (1
> per 75 words or so). It's also more typing work.


I once played around with ReST, footnote export was fairly finicky.
(I'm more than willing to attribute this to my own lack of
understanding). It can be tricky to think of unique labels for each
footnote and to keep references in order. As I understand it, the
primary rationale for labelled footnotes in simple markup is to create
a source text that someone unfamiliar with the markup can read easily.
Since org-mode has ASCII export capabilities and can hide markup when
displaying text (e.g., hyperlinks, drawers), I wonder whether these
legibility issues are quite so crucial.

Best,

Matt