From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Scot Becker" Subject: Re: Footnotes and org-export, revisited Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:59:42 +0000 Message-ID: References: <5171E67B-8472-409A-A0EE-7EA25D18D58B@uva.nl> <873agmyg4y.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LCyoM-00051F-Ch for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:59:46 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LCyoK-00050S-Ic for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:59:45 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=46687 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LCyoK-00050O-EP for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:59:44 -0500 Received: from wf-out-1314.google.com ([209.85.200.170]:39382) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1LCyoJ-0001uZ-PW for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:59:44 -0500 Received: by wf-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 28so3644480wfc.24 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:59:42 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <873agmyg4y.fsf@gmail.com> Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Paul R Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org 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. 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. Some of the disadvantages of Usage 2 can helped. A fairly simple footnote composition routine could automate the note entry and return to the body text, and, for the desperate, could append a few random characters to the reference for uniqueness. Its similarity to the other minimal markup languages might lend itself towards easy export to those. (Pandoc, for example, has initial support for citeproc a citatation scheme still in development which aims at being a kind of BibTeX for plain-text markup languages). A user's preference probably depends on whether they expect to do a lot of editing within org (where you might bias readability and therefore the separation of note and body text) or just want a quick write, either because you don't require a lot of reworking or because you plan to do it elsewhere, in LaTeX, one of the lightweight markups, or a (gasp) GUI Word Processor. Scot