Another thought is that we live with a lot of conventions left over from print. For example, a glossary in print made sense, but online you can have in situ hover-overs. (This is one thing that drives me crazy in ebooks, where the author uses some local slang and when I get to the end of the book, there is a glossary that I no longer need.)
Footnotes definitely have a place in print and have an equivalent online, though the implementation would be different. For example, a footnote on an endless scroll page wouldn't make sense. So where does that go, and does it then cease to be a footnote, per se?
On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 6:03 AM, Don Day <> wrote:
Footnotes may not be easily solved for equivalence across HTML
and Markdown and still return to DITA. The data models (indeed the
intent behind the designs) is all different.
Markdown has a close proxy to footnotes in its "reference links",
but HTML has no architected equivalent--rather than providing for
a semantic structure with footnote-like behavior, HTML5 has you
inserting markup that supports the behavior, but you cannot easily
decompose it back into the intent of a reference link when
converting into DITA. One Markdown extension suggests adding a
caret into the reference (i.e., [^1] to imply a proper footnote,
meaning that extended content can be ascribed to it (see
http://rephrase.net/box/word/footnotes/syntax/). But since HTML
has no way to be similarly extended, we are limited to whatever
processing and display semantic are available.
One user has proposed a footnote design for a future HTML5, but
don't hold your breath. It would be a properly architected
structure for deferred content, but good ideas take time to win
hearts, if ever. This proposal article (see
http://davidmacd.com/blog/html51-footnotes.html) actually explains
the ePub solution well, and it is compelling to me for now--I'm
inclined to make use of <aside> for any sort of deferable
content in HDITA structures (perhaps for <note> as well, if
you can accept that it is deferable (or at least can be floated
outside of the normal galley flow).
Meanwhile, although the details/summary markup does provide an
architected design that represents content that can be deferred
from the main view, it is more truthfully a visibility toggle, not
a reference to a block of text. This is soo close, but I
understand perfectly why ePub eschews its use as a footnote. This
markup would better serve the role of a FAQ in which the question
is the <details> and the answer is the <summary>
content, with expanding behavior in the display.
Try pasting this content into a small HTML file and drop it onto
a browser to see how HTML5 summary/details works.
---------------------------------
<p>The details element in HTML5 works best as an
interaction that toggles visibility on and off. Normally this is
done with spans and divs and a tiny bit of _javascript_ for the
interaction. Note how content pushes down as summary content is
toggled into view:</p>
<details>
<summary>Q: Why are markup architectures so
difficult?</summary>
<p>A: Humans design solutions for different
reasons.</p>
</details>
<details>
<summary>Q: Why do we care about what we
do?</summary>
<p>A: Because we like to prevail over the limitations
handed to us.</p>
</details>
<p>Note that this markup provides default behavior in the
browser; no _javascript_ is needed. The downside is that the default
presentation is ugly and not all browsers provide CSS hooks for
styling yet.</p>
------------------------------------------
So although it is useful to see how summary/details works, I
consider it to be a UI gadget rather than a useful container for
content. The nested containers are good, but their behavior
precludes the intent of a footnote, in my opinion. I'd save this
markup for FAQs and for progressive disclosure use cases.
I say let's see why the ePub solution is not better, and whether we
can shoehorn <aside> as footnote into Markdown semantics like
the reference link. I think this comes closest to lining up with
DITA fn intent (especially with the caret extension).
I could be convinced that it is a useful design point to allow
Lightweight DITA to be only as rich as there exist fully equivalent
markup solutions across all versions (and common Markdown at
that--extensions become liabilities outside the few environments
that support them). 1 Designating and maintaining the
record copy out of 3 near equivalents is a recipe for Version
Control Induced Insanity.
--
Don
1 Of course, there is always "DITA used lightly" that I
get a lot of present use out of. ;-)
On 4/18/2016 10:52 AM, Michael
Priestley wrote:
Interesting
discussion here, on how it's
being done in EPUB and why:
http://idpf.org/forum/topic-885
Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Enterprise Content Technology Strategist
http://dita.xml.org/blog/michael-priestley
--
Don R. Day
Founding Chair, OASIS
DITA Technical Committee
LinkedIn: donrday Twitter:
@donrday
About.me: Don R. Day Skype:
don.r.day
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Content
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