Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 09:48 AM 12/12/2004 +1100, David Gerard
wrote:
What we need is to encourage a culture of
including references. I'm
trying
to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it
doing
fancy reference-indexing things.)
Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature
request for a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding
[[Note:blah blah blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn
into a superscripted number linking to an anchor for the text "blah
blah blah" down at the very bottom of the page. Something like that
could be suitable for references too, though it wouldn't be nice for
making multiple references to the same source scattered throughout an
article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup that automatically
combines identical "blah blah" text into the same reference at the
bottom?
<footnote>This would probably be better and more
intuitive.</footnote>, where the tag might be "footnote",
"foot",
"note", or whatever. It also fits in with the way that the software is
designed to be extended.
I think that this approach would be more idiot proof. It should
parallel the category system but probably simpler since it does not need
to be directly referenced from anywhere outside of the article. The
categories for an article can be made to show up together at a
predetermined place on the page; in that regard this would be no
different.
I don't think that multiple references to the same source should be
combined. It would make it difficult to backtrace a reference to see
just where a reference was used. If the reference is in any way
questionable you want to be able to see just what statements were based
on it. Still other references will be to the same source but may differ
only by the page number in the work.
The default placement of footnotes should be at the bottom of the page,
but I would add a couple of options. In the first I would allow for
them to be put at the end of each section with an H2 heading. This
would put the notes closer to where they are needed. In some cases the
editor may even want them at the end of each paragraph.
Another option could be to put them in a new column to the right of the
noted text, and aligned so that the notes can scroll with the text. In
Wikisource this could have some very interesting applications. In
addition to having footnotes we have also had some talk about
encouraging translations of the works that we carry. A very similar
technique could be used to anchor the translations of text sections,
perhaps by putting the note as the first item in a paragraph.
Ec