Differentiate between footnotes and endnotes

[link2xt]

Some formats, like OpenDocument and Docx have support for footnotes and endnotes. LaTeX has endnotes package. FB3 format will have an option for endnotes: https://github.com/gribuser/FB3/blob/master/fb3_links.xsd

Now converting Docx to ODT or ODT to Docx converts all endnotes to footnotes. (edit: i stated that converting to ODT converted to endnotes, it was a result of my local modifications)

I suggest to add footnote/endnote marker to AST to avoid losing this information for ODT and Docx. For LaTeX read footnotes as footnotes and add support for endnotes package later. For wiki-like formats it has to be footnotes for compatibility so users converting markdown to PDF via LaTeX are not surprised when they see their notes placed at the end of the document.

[link2xt]

Definition even has a comment saying "footnote or endnote":
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-types/blob/f0731bf2106f0cd38c34a25c59f16ccc9082fff7/Text/Pandoc/Definition.hs#L266

I want to add a NoteType similar to QuoteType and MathType and add it to Note constructor. If there are no objections, I can try to do it myself and submit a PR for pandoc-types.

[jgm]

Any discussion of changes to Note in the AST should also consider these issues: #1603, #2053.
Fixing those issues would seem to require storing the note reference separately from the note contents.

[link2xt]

Only #1603 requires storing note reference separately from the note contents. Great idea, as it makes sense to refer to the same footnote multiple times sometimes, but I rarely see it in real texts. Also, as pointed out in #2053 discussion, referring to previous footnote in LaTeX can only be done manually with \footnotemark. I think #1603 is a completely separate issue which can be postponed.

As for #2053, it is just a problem with Markdown reader. It is correct that trying to convert it to PDF via LaTeX will result in missing footnotes, but it is a problem of LaTeX writer or LaTeX itself.

What I see in real texts is endnotes referenced from footnotes (also discussed in #2053, @Kedrigern even suggested adding endnotes), but I see no problem with them after making AST changes that I suggest. LibreOffice does not support endnotes inside footnotes, manually produced .fodt document with endnote placed inside footnote does not load, but it is the bug of LibreOffice I think. LaTeX document with endnote inside footnote compiles correctly.

[link2xt]

Pull request submitted: jgm/pandoc-types#34

[link2xt]

Just a note: texinfo has @footnotestyle which can be set to end or separate. Need to test if they can be mixed to emulate footnotes and endnotes.

[adunning]

There's also #1425 (migrated from the mailing list), which has some interesting discussion attached to it

[link2xt]

@adunning Looks like I implemented exactly the same thing as described except for indentation (EndNote instead of Endnote) and I have no Marginnote.

[rriemann]

Looking forward to use endnotes with pandoc! Hurray!

[jeremyong]

Found this issue looking for marginnote support directly. Is there any motion and getting this functionality in? Thanks

[brainchild0]

My understanding is that the current structure of the AST, which makes no distinction among notes according to type, most appropriately follows the objective of capturing a semantic representation of a document.

Distinction between footnotes and endnotes (and indeed, further, margin notes) appears to be a choice of styling based on the nature of a publication.

The Chicago Manual of Style explains that notes may be formatted according to either method, but appears to assume that a publication will generally commit to one or the other.

Relevant comments begin in Section 14.39 (16th Edition):

Readers of scholarly printed works usually prefer footnotes for ease of reference.

They continue, in Section 14.40:

Because of [flexibility from simpler page layout], and because pages free of footnotes are less intimidating to many readers, publishers' marketing and sales staff may recommend endnotes in books directed to general as well as scholarly or professional readers.

Finally, a special case appears, in Section 14.44:

In a heavily documented work it is occasionally helpful to separate substantive notes from source citations. In such a case, the citation notes should be numbered and appear as endnotes. The substantive notes, indicated by asterisks and other symbols, appear as footnotes.

Following the last remarks, a means to distinguish among notes in a document may be valuable, but relevant observations point away from a static distinction between two kinds, which all readers and writers would attempt to support, and toward a distinction by user-defined class names, which writers can variously be configured to process as desired for a specific document.

Indeed, all notes appearing in a single sequence best supports the basic case, of only one method of formatting notes being available in the output.

Whereas classical publishing appears to support at least three common styles of notes, the meaning of these styles transfers poorly to digital display targets. In a hypertext document, such as a web page, footnotes and endnotes appear to lack distinction generally, and margin notes are possible in principle, but often only if a margin is created expressly for such purpose. Popup notes become possible in such an interactive environment, but never of course in hard printing.

Division of notes in a document into two kinds, as suggested, appears to be unable to generalize.

I recommend the following:

• Roll out support in writers for producing endnotes instead of footnotes according to user option.
• Open discussion over attaching class names to notes. (The most expedient approach, involving no AST changes, is to wrap inside a span.)
• Add options for writers to support user control over notes style according to class names.

In LaTeX support is possible through very minor changes, which are to use the endnotes package, to abstract the macro for notes into one that can be redefined from \footnote to \endnote, and finally, to add \theendnotes to the document end. Despite objections over using further packages in the output document, I am aware of no compelling reason to avoid it.

Note however that formatting a LaTeX document with footnotes and endnotes combined is less trivial than merely using the basic macros provided by the endnotes package. Through the basic use, both notes are indicated by identically-styled numeric superscripts (see example). Further customization would be required to comport with, for example, the CMS recommendation that footnotes are marked by non-numeric symbols.