Steve Bennett wrote:
If the person designing the references syntax had thought about this a bit more, these severe problems should have been apparent to them. A much more sensible thing would be to use [1], [2] etc. in the text, and define the references in the place where they are actually displayed -- the References section. (Duh.)
We used to have a system (or 3) like that. It was crap. Hard numbering footnotes is an awful solution.
Why? I can't think why. Of course, the software would have to automatically renumber them if references get deleted or moved around.
The only thing I can think of that would work is that a person can add a footnote like this:
Sometext<ref> a reference in the good old style</ref>...some more text.
....which the software would actually move down to the references section.
That's another possibility, of course -- although I would still contend that something like [1], or even if it needs to be [ref:1], is much better (easier to read, easier to ignore, easier to type, easier to type without mistakes) than <ref name="ref1"/>.
Timwi