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Bug 11217 - Footnotes I find it hard to believe, that even today, HTML does not include a specific element for including notes within the text. Notes are necessary for the full argumentation in the text without still belonging to the main text itself, and they includ
Summary: Footnotes I find it hard to believe, that even today, HTML does not include a...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LC1 HTML Canvas 2D Context (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-11-04 12:35 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2011-08-04 05:04 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2010-11-04 12:35:37 UTC 
Specification: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete.html#top

Comment:
Footnotes

I find it hard to believe, that even today, HTML does not include a specific
element for including notes within the text. Notes are necessary for the full
argumentation in the text without still belonging to the main text itself, and
they include citations to sources and to the works of other authors,

In traditional publishing, these are usually reproduced as footnotes or
endnotes, occasionally even as margin notes. The note itself is a _structural_
element, independent of its typographical representation, and as such
definitively would need a _structural_ element of its own. In the section
"Footnotes" there are examples of how to represent notes usign HTML. These
examples are all focused on the way, how to produce visual effects that look
like footnotes/endnotes/margin notes. None of these examples goes to any way
of solving the problem of presenting notes _structurally_ within a HTML
document.

Footnotes are not going to disappear just because IT specialists do not use
them. A major part of the legal, social and humanistic professions do use
them, and the lack of a corresponding HTML element will have a strong adverse
effect on the useability of HTML as a document representation format.

Best Wishes,

Harri Kiiskinen

Posted from: 130.232.37.20
Comment 1 Tab Atkins Jr. 2010-11-04 13:35:36 UTC 
<figure> can be used to mark up a footnote.  The display of footnotes is a CSS issue, not an HTML issue.
Comment 2 Doug Jones 2010-11-05 16:25:17 UTC 
(In reply to comment #0)
> Specification: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
> Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete.html#top
> 
> Comment:
> Footnotes

Are you asking for an element such as <note> to specifically identify content as a footnote, etc? Otherwise, a note can be placed in a <p> or <li> element in an <aside> section. It seems to me that aside is a better choice than figure.

<aside class="footnote">
 <ol>
   <li value="1">First footnote.</li>
   <li value="2">Second footnote.</li>
 </ol>
</aside>

I agree that a note is a structural aspect of a document, but am not sure if a separate element is required. There are not elements for chapter or sentence.

Doug Jones
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-12-29 08:14:09 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: The spec lists a variety of ways of including inline notes already. It's not clear why they're not sufficient.
Comment 4 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:04:05 UTC 
mass-move component to LC1