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The "FootnotesAndBeforeFloats/Footnotes" page has been changed by 
AndreasLDelmelle:
http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FootnotesAndBeforeFloats/Footnotes

New page:
''This page is a work-in-progress, and aims to serve as documentation of how 
FOP's layout engine processes footnotes, mainly to save interested contributors 
the hassle of having to find out the hard way...''
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= Introduction =

[[http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/|XSL-FO]] defines the {{{fo:footnote}}} formatting 
object to allow authors to insert citations into their documents. 
These footnotes are attached to the line area in which they would appear, and 
are to be rendered in a reserved footnote-area on the after-edge of the 
region-reference-area, preceded by a footnote-separator if one is defined in 
the source.
This page intends to describe only the approach with respect to the layout 
engine. The initial validation of out-of-line descendants during parsing is 
considered out of scope.

FOP's layout engine has to deal with footnote content in two phases (most 
general use case; see further below for the special cases):
 * Line layout: the footnotes are attached to the box representing the line 
area that holds the surrounding inline content in the source
 * Page layout: the footnotes are placed on the page that contains the line 
area that holds the anchor

= Line layout =

During the initial collection of the inline {{{KnuthElements}}}, if footnotes 
are encountered, a {{{KnuthInlineBox}}} is generated for the anchor, that holds 
a reference to the {{{FootnoteBodyLayoutManager}}}. If the anchor is empty, a 
dummy auxiliary box will be inserted to make sure the footnote is rendered at 
the appropriate place. (see: 
{{{org.apache.fop.layoutmgr.inline.FootnoteLayoutManager.getNextKnuthElements()}}})

The {{{LineLayoutManager}}} is responsible for making sure that the LMs for the 
footnote-bodies are attached to the appropriate line box (see: 
{{{org.apache.fop.layoutmgr.inline.LineLayoutManager.postProcessLineBreaks()}}}).

== Special cases: lists and tables ==

As lists and tables 'aggregate' their content and return {{{KnuthBoxes}}} 
encompassing multiple line areas, they (currently) have to take care of 
propagating the footnotes from the contained line boxes upward, so that the 
{{{PageBreaker}}} will be able to access them. TODOs have been left in the 
code, and concerns have been raised that the related classes should actually 
remain footnote-agnostic. Ultimately, there is a certain duplication of what 
{{{LineLayoutManager}}} does...

One possible strategy to avoid that, would be to push this out of the LMs, and 
into a factory that constructs boxes based on (lists of) element lists. All 
this logic would then be contained in a single class. The LMs, instead of 
explicitly instantiating the boxes, would just pass the sublist(s) that 
represent the contained content, and get back the appropriate type of box to 
add to their element list.

see also: [[https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37579|Bugzilla 
37579]]

= Page layout =

== Initial pass - Layout of the footnote bodies ==

During an initial pass over the block list returned by the 
{{{FlowLayoutManager}}}, the {{{PageBreaker}}} first triggers line layout of 
all the footnote-bodies, so that the footnotes' lists of line boxes are 
directly accessible in the corresponding content boxes. The reason this was 
deferred from line layout, is that the context will not always be the same. In 
case of multi-column layout, the footnotes will span the whole 
region-reference-area, rather than follow the flow's column-count.

If footnotes were encountered, layout of the footnote-separator is done here, 
so that its block-progression-dimension will be readily available when needed 
later by the {{{PageBreakingAlgorithm}}}.

see: {{{org.apache.fop.layoutmgr.PageBreaker.getNextKnuthElements()}}}

== Calculating the breaks ==

A (line) box with anchors triggers 
{{{PageBreakingAlgorithm.handleFootnotes()}}}, which:

 * adds the corresponding element lists to footnoteList
 * computes the total length of each of the element lists
 * for each element list, stores the accumulated length of all preceding notes 
plus its own, in {{{lengthList}}}

Additionally, {{{totalFootnotesLength}}} is increased with the length of each 
footnote.

For all following legal breaks, this will result in 
{{{PageBreakingAlgorithm.computeDifference()}}} taking into account the 
additional width required for the footnote separator and the footnotes up to 
that point.
If the total length of content + separator + all footnotes does not fit within 
the available width, and it is allowed to defer part of the footnotes to the 
following page, the footnote length will be split here.

The chosen strategy is to:
 * first try adding all footnotes that can no longer be deferred (i.e. were 
already carried over from a previous break)
 * then add whole footnotes, until we reach one that doesn't fit in its entirety
 * from the next footnote, try adding more parts, until we reach the part that 
doesn't fit anymore


= Remaining Issues =

== Footnotes and multi-column flows ==

Since there is no hard distinction between page- and column-breaks, with 
respect to footnotes, each column acts as its own page. The best node for each 
column is determined by only looking at the footnotes whose anchors are in 
''that'' particular column. This leads to overlaps between footnotes and the 
flow content.

see: [[https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=51304|Bugzilla 51304]]

== Infinite loops in footnote deferral ==

There are currently multiple open Bugzilla reports about infinite loops being 
triggered under certain circumstances. Closer inspection reveals that the 
culprit is the footnote deferral mechanism, very likely in the interaction 
between {{{PageBreakingAlgorithm.getFootnoteSplit()}}} and 
{{{.createFootnotePages()}}}. Certain assumptions are made in 
{{{getFootnoteSplit()}}} that do not always seem to hold. One such assumption 
is that the local variable {{{splitLength}}} will eventually always exceed the 
{{{availableLength}}}.

see: [[https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47424|Bugzilla 47424]]
or [[https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=48397|Bugzilla 48397]]

== Space resolution between footnotes ==

When the {{{PageBreakingAlgorithm}}} adds a box's footnotes, space-resolution 
is triggered for each footnote separately. This does not take into account 
potential stacking constraints ''between'' the footnotes.

see code comment in: {{{PageBreakingAlgorithm.handleFootnotes()}}}

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