From my point of view (working with wikis, and more specifically with
the Xinha WYSIWYG editor) it's a use case I often run into for user-
editable content. Right now, we do all sorts of lovely things to try
and keep our "magic" in place (backlinks, numbering, classes, etc.).
It would be much easier if there was semantic support for footnotes in
the first place.
As an aside <tongue in cheek/> I noticed the new aside element. Isn't
aside more of a presentational decision? What's the difference
between sidenotes and footnotes other than styling? Would we be
better off combining both use cases into a single element with an
attribute to provide display hinting? This would give more choice to
user agents when it came to final display in constrained situations
(mobile, print, screen readers, etc.)
Douglas Mayle
The Open Planning Project
On Dec 15, 2008, at 5:18 PM, Brenton Strine wrote:
Maybe after having a few months to think about it some better ideas
will pop up?
I'd like to see a dedicated way to do footnotes as well. I think it
would be worth having the discussion again.
Brenton
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of Ian Hickson
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 2:11 PM
To: Douglas Mayle
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Footnotes
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008, Douglas Mayle wrote:
I'm sorry to bring this up if the subject has been touched on
before...
In perusing the HTML5 standard, I noticed that footnotes are still a
redheaded stepchild in the draft. Given how many workarounds and
hacks are performed to create support for footnotes using standard
elements, is there any reason why there isn't a dedicated mechanism
for footnotes in HTML?
The main reason is that we couldn't find any solutions that were
especially compelling. A more detailed response to the earlier
feedback on the topic is here:
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-April/014485.html
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )
\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _
\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--
(,_..'`-.;.'
