Hello, Achim Gratz <strom...@nexgo.de> writes:
>>> If one intends to export his Org file to ODT, then nested footnote >>> construction should be avoided like plague. >> >> It isn't really supported in LaTeX too, but there are workarounds. > > There are always workarounds, but footnotes within footnotes aren't > directly supported by any publishing system I know of, and with good > reason. A footnote, just like a marginal, is an expansion on the main > text that can be skipped without loss of information (but maybe loss of > detail). That's what I thought before the OP request. Though, it appears that it is a not so rare need. For example critical editions seem to use it quite often. > So whenever you feel that you need a footnote within a footnote, you > could just as well have two footnotes at the original place. I have never needed nested footnotes, so I feel like the Devil's advocate but anyway... Imagine a very large footnote, spanning over tens of lines. You would like to add a footnote next to a word in the middle of that text. I suppose it wouldn't make sense to get out of that footnote and be told there's another reference for a word you read many lines ago. >> If such thing isn't possible, ODT back-end will ignore any footnote >> contained in another footnote (i.e. whose genealogy contains an element >> with an `footnote-reference' or `footnote-definition' type) and send >> a message to the user. > > It would be better to not promote the idea of footnotes within footnotes > and those who insist on using that construct should be required to > explicitly request that feature and suffer the consequences. Note that Org inherently supports nested footnotes. Forbidding them would be much like an artificial limitation. I don't mind such limitation, but knowing that they may happen to be useful, it's worth pondering if it really should be so. > Much better would be if starting a footnote while within a footnote > would simply open a new footnote and add the reference at the same place > where the first one was opened. That's a possible workaround I was talking about earlier. And it's perfectly possible with the experimental exporter. ODT back-end may implement it. That's mostly what I did with the LaTeX back-end. Nested footnotes definitions are inserted right after the top level footnote definition containing them. Only footnotes markers are nested. Regards, -- Nicolas Goaziou
