How to create a footnote in Affinity Publisher?

[firstdefence]

3 hours ago, niallsop said:

Yes it is, for it's a reminder to anyone from Serif reading this that one unhappy client, or potential client, can influence others ... who in turn influence others  ... who in turn ...

In other words exactly how I found out about it in the first place ...

That behaviour is called spite among other things, it is not professional nor helpful, it solves nothing and certainly doesn't magically increase production. Suggesting losing people business through influence because a feature doesn't exist yet is not exactly productive is it, it smacks of immaturity and I have seen it time and again on this forum.

At least put forward constructive criticism and create or add to the feature request post if one exists: 

 

[niallsop]

Well, well ... I respectfully suggest you know nothing about me and that maybe it's time to descend from your high horse and stop making judgements that emit a whiff of arrogance.

[Katia]

In the meantime, I found a post about somebody who hacked the footnote problem somewhat importing a PDF file. The text is in German, but you'll be able to translate this quickly with google et al. 

https://digibooverlag.com/blog/affintiy-publisher-endnoten

 

[firstdefence]

4 hours ago, niallsop said:

Well, well ... I respectfully suggest you know nothing about me and that maybe it's time to descend from your high horse and stop making judgements that emit a whiff of arrogance.

I'll agree to disagree.

 

[JGD]

On 10/5/2021 at 5:41 PM, firstdefence said:

I'll agree to disagree.

 

Add another one to the list of those who not only need footnotes (something any basic word processor under the sun offers, mind you), but also who'll agree to disagree with your disagreement. I've been posting all sorts of really demanding comments in these forums for years (clearly not as many as you, but I've always liked to measure my output in quality over quantity), and not even a bad experience I had with a Serif developer (yes, I've had one) soured my relationship with the company, as their stance then didn't even come close to your posturing now (hey, at least they were defending their own work – something to which I always give a pass –, they don't need your help for that… And if they do need help, that's what moderators are here for).

This is a user forum where users come to find solutions for their problems (whether they're something there's already a solution for, can be solved through a workaround or – as is sadly the case – can only be addressed by Serif developers at some point down the road), so I'll kindly ask you to leave us be and let us discuss what we actually need from our professional tools like adults. If we can't put pressure on a company of which we're paying customers (and potential ongoing customers still, at least when it comes to future paid updates, which I fully expect to come out one of these days), what use are the forums, anyway? Might as well shut the whole thing down and call it a night. 🙄

Just another two cents, on the subject of shortcomings, expectations and the consequences of not fixing the former and meeting the latter in a timely manner: I am now a full-blown MA teacher, with an entire class of 28 Advanced Typography students counting on me for guidance (I've been giving hint upon hint about it to Serif devs for years now, by the way), and we're now actively discussing, amongst Faculty, whether to steer our students towards Serif's Affinity apps (which are cheap enough for them to buy, even in a poor country like ours) or to just let them keep pirating CC by default like there's no tomorrow. As the latter is what they'll run into on professional studios, and what they may even be able to afford themselves if and when they set up their own freelance practices and declare it as a tax-deductible monthly expense, I guess this is still not the year when I – who my Design Department teachers/colleagues fully trust on this matter, as it seems I'm the most hardcore Affinity user and potential full-time switcher in there (incidentally, I was just “dogfooding” myself before by typesetting a basic two-page brief for my students in APub, and… well, to my surprise, no automatic footnotes for me, which means I should've stuck with my – wait for it – LibreOffice.org template¹ 🤦‍♂️) – will advise them to tell the students to take the plunge and make the switch. Sorry! 🤷‍♂️

 

______________________

¹ Crazy as this may sound, I'll actually be typesetting – as in, literally writing the work files and preparing the final versions for digital and print production – my entire PhD thesis (and have been typesetting all my papers and reports so far) in LOo Writer, of all solutions; MS Word on the Mac doesn't support vector images or DTP-like master pages and baseline guides, and strips out all index and cross-reference links when exporting to PDF, whereas neither InDesign, InCopy or APub support Zotero or Mendeley CSL field codes and automatic bibliography generation (and you won't see me asking for support for those in APub here, as not even the huge, 80lb monopolist gorilla will support them either), without which I might as well write the whole damned thing on a typewriter instead, and even if Scribus did at some point, I'd rather gouge my eyes out than subject myself to using it. But hey, APub will still be included at the very end of the print version workflow/pipeline, as LOo only supports RGB and I'll also be forced to open my final PDFs and manually change, one spread at a time, all the text to C0M0Y0K100 from whatever dark-brown-looking mess r0g0b0 is automatically converted into. 😬

[sfriedberg]

On 10/5/2021 at 1:26 AM, v_kyr said:

Well all in all there is usually much more tightly related to footnotes/sidenotes/endnotes handling, especially for technical thesis/books/articles publishing, like for example ...

• Creation of variables, references, footnotes, bibliography
• Create and link to bibliographic references, contents table of bibliography/papers
• Create Bibliography lists and entries with Citavi or EndNote
• Common PUB notes handling – footnote enhanced, convert to endnotes, create sidenote
• Common PUB custom vars handling – Handling custom variables
• Create Glossary with pictures, contents table of figures, contents table of formulas etc.
• Create markers, variables and cross-reference formats
• References to footnotes with chapter number
• Reference to specific pages in book
• Running header, footnotes/bibliography/figures list etc.  across multiple book/project related files
• Special numbering of footnotes
• ... and so on ...

So the whole concept of footnotes/sidenotes/endnotes has to be ideally build-up in a very reusable, customizable and flexible manner, which of course isn't a trivial task to design/create/implement at all.

@v_kyrThis is all absolutely correct.  I'd been playing with the idea of writing a "Desiderata for References in Publisher" that covers that sort of thing, and how the reference feature relates to use of (variable) fields, plugins, numbering, indexing, etc., etc.  Complete lack of spare time prevents that writeup, but your list overlaps with the list in my handscribbled notes about 85%.

[firstdefence]

7 hours ago, JGD said:

like adults

I agree

[PaoloT]

8 hours ago, JGD said:

footnotes (something any basic word processor under the sun offers, mind you)

It is maybe sometimes useful to remember that Publisher is not a word processor.

Paolo

 

[Finrach]

I'm all but done with Adobe now (just the free Bridge and Acrobat left), but I'm still split maybe 70/30 in favour of opening Quark instead of AP. A recent book had to be Q because AP had no footnote feature, and I made the mistake of recommending an AP purchase to an editor so we can progress a new project together, only to receive the first draft which is riddled with footnotes ... refund request and embarrassing conversation to follow. I'm loving using Affinity. The devs have done a fantastic job but I'm just adding my frustration to this thread in the hope that this feature makes it into the app sooner rather than later.

[Morbus Iff]

I need footnotes/endnotes too.

But, just so I'm clear (as a newb Publisher user), we can still manually recreate footnotes and endnotes in Publisher, right? Like, if I say to myself "man, I have to weigh a $60/lifetime purchase vs. a $30/month rental", then I could decide that recreating footnotes manually (i.e., numbering myself, superscripting myself, manually placing the footnotes in the right location, etc.) is worth the price point difference, right?

Edited November 4, 2021 by Morbus Iff

[Fixx]

9 hours ago, Morbus Iff said:

we can still manually recreate footnotes and endnotes in Publisher, right?

If you do it once a week it is ok. If you do it daily, automated footnotes would save so much time that rental might make sense.

[M Dale]

9 hours ago, Morbus Iff said:

I need footnotes/endnotes too.

But, just so I'm clear (as a newb Publisher user), we can still manually recreate footnotes and endnotes in Publisher, right? Like, if I say to myself "man, I have to weigh a $60/lifetime purchase vs. a $30/month rental", then I could decide that recreating footnotes manually (i.e., numbering myself, superscripting myself, manually placing the footnotes in the right location, etc.) is worth the price point difference, right?

Hi Morbus,

If you have two footnote, maybe. When you have an academic book to design, with hundreds of footnotes...then there is a serious time issue. Besides, when the text changes, and the footnote goes over to the next page, you have an accumulation of issues that follow. Hence, we live in hope that Affinity soon will introduce automated foot/endnotes.

[M Dale]

Indeed , once a week a few footnotes here and there would be ok. To repay myself: when you work regularly with hundreds of footnotes, the process must be of an automated flow nature. The 'other' programme has this, and does it well, but I find the principle of renting the programme with no choice of buying it utterly obscene. Hence, my hopes are on Affinity to keep designing possible for those who cannot afford 60 USD per month. There are, for instance, worldwide tens of thousands of people making designs for charities and non-profits organisations, their church, club etc, who are willing to give their time, but not their money. And then there are the academics, who make publications to educate the world. This is not big business (although, of course, there are money grabbers there too) but giving back their gift to the people so that they can advance themselves.

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, M Dale said:

And then there are the academics, who make publications to educate the world.

I wonder if a layout program is really needed in these cases. If you are a publishing house specialized in academic books or magazines, you obviously go for the tool that can let you do your job. In this moment they are mostly InDesign and QuarkXPress. Publisher will possibly be later, but not now. Dealing with this type of publications without automatic management of notes is fool.

But if an academic has to publish his own work without going though a professional publisher, can't a wordprocessor alone be enough? I'm often surprised by how good Apple Pages is in making good looking pages. It can't do optical margins alignment, but kerning, ligatures and other advanced features are perfectly fine.

And it exports ePubs effortlessly, if the book has to be published in digital form instead of the less and less common printed on paper. Another thing that Publisher at the moment can't do, and we can't pretend to be there until it is there.

Paolo

 

[JGD]

On 10/21/2021 at 8:25 AM, PaoloT said:

It is maybe sometimes useful to remember that Publisher is not a word processor.

Paolo

 

Sure. But you do realize that there is quite a big functional overlap between word processors and DTP apps, right? It's mostly a UX thing pertaining to their lineage (as I made very clear from my, err, convoluted example workflow in LOo Writer, which to me is just a DTP app, only F/OSS and with extra steps. And way uglier, at that, but still more bearable, usable and interoperable than Scribus, of course).

From a historical and functional standpoint, word processors are basically just glorified digital typewriter emulators onto which additional DTP functionality has been grafted over the years… footnotes and endnotes definitely falling under the latter category, IMHO. And if you want to look at from the opposite angle, DTP apps are just digital “typewriters” (or, better yet, descendants of actual digital typewriters, which were a – really powerful – thing) on a lot of steroids (and you could replace “typewriters” with phototypesetting terminals, hot metal typesetting machines before them, yadda yadda… Roughly speaking, and disregarding all the justification wizardry they offered and which only really advanced digital typewriters by IBM and the likes would eventually rival, they all had keyboards and allowed you to typeset stuff; no more, no less), which basically makes them really close cousins, or stepbrothers, or whatever, to word processors. To-may-to, to-mah-to, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

I won't do any more of this historiography of DTP tools, word processors or typewriters at the moment (because, incidentally, I have one class on typographic metrics values to prepare and, not-so-funnily enough, just ran into yet another annoying quirk of AD regarding “universal” guidelines which definitely warrants yet another standalone post here in the forums), but I'm willing to bet that even Aldus PageMaker had footnotes and endnotes quite early on, let alone InDesign or QuarkXPress. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yes, APub is very affordable by comparison, but existing DTP apps have been, by their very function of serving standards and conventions that have been somewhat frozen for hundreds of years now, stagnant for decades as well. The only thing Serif has to do is catch up, and catch up they really must if they want to capture this market in earnest.

[Old Bruce]

4 minutes ago, JGD said:

From a historical and functional standpoint, word processors are basically just glorified digital typewriter emulators onto which additional DTP functionality has been grafted over the years… footnotes and endnotes definitely falling under the latter category, IMHO.

Had to read this several times. Are you saying that Footnotes is something that is not from the typewriter emulation part of word processors? I would think that word processors had this feature fairly early on in their evolution. Pre DTP applications. Can't say for certain as I am just going on my memory which is fallible.

I mean manual typewriters had this functionality, I just had to be careful and pay attention. I will admit that I frequently had to retype a page.

[Granddaddy]

2 hours ago, JGD said:

From a historical and functional standpoint, word processors are basically just glorified digital typewriter emulators onto which additional DTP functionality has been grafted over the years… footnotes and endnotes definitely falling under the latter category, IMHO.

This is clearly not the case. You have the history in reverse order.

I graduated from typewriters to word processing software more than 40 years ago. I've never seen a word processing software environment that did not have footnotes, endnotes, table of contents, indexes, headers, footers, running titles, and page numbering capability. All these word processing functions long preceded the invention of desktop publishing software.

I started word processing with GML/Script on an IBM mainframe, moved to PC-Write (DOS), Word Perfect (DOS), and Microsoft Word (DOS), and finally Word for Windows. The last was a triumph. We were finally freed from inserting special codes and tags into the text stream to control formatting. Instead, we assigned properties to paragraphs, sentences, and words to get the results we needed. Suddenly word processing was object oriented rather than data stream oriented. More powerfully, we could control formatting globally through the use of styles built from combinations of properties of textual elements. The other fundamental word processing invention was fields that provide references to and that grab data from other locations in a document.

Desktop publishing software on the other hand was invented later to control page layout, to put into frames precisely located on the page such things as images or text continued from frames on other pages. A DTP package that couldn't handle the basic elements of textual content like footnotes and endnotes produced by word processors was of little to no use for writers.

In the category of what you call "digital typewriter emulators" I'd perhaps include XEDIT (IBM's text editor used to construct GML/Script files that were processed into page output printed on $250,000 laser printers in the university computer center}. You could also include Windows Notepad and KEDIT (DOS and Windows) as typewriter emulators. 

[PaoloT]

14 hours ago, JGD said:

But you do realize that there is quite a big functional overlap between word processors and DTP apps, right? […] 

From a historical and functional standpoint, word processors are basically just glorified digital typewriter emulators onto which additional DTP functionality has been grafted over the years… footnotes and endnotes definitely falling under the latter category, IMHO. […]

I'm willing to bet that even Aldus PageMaker had footnotes and endnotes quite early on, let alone InDesign or QuarkXPress. […]

The only thing Serif has to do is catch up, and catch up they really must if they want to capture this market in earnest.

Maybe I'm not reading between the lines, but I have to disagree in wordprocessors and DTP programs having a really big functional overlap. They may share features, but they start from a very different history and use case.

As you say, wordprocessors start as typewriter emulators; this latter being an emulator of the commercial letter of the centuries before. Kerouac, with his endless roll of paper, was probably the one to make it a heir of the journal, and the predecessor of the wordprocessor.

Publishing programs come from the typographer's composing table, and where still in mens dei up until the late Seventies of the latest century. They still serve different functions, despite many layout features having more or less successfully transmigrated into wordprocessors. Not all that successfully, probably, if we are here, instead of simply using Word or Pages.

Footnotes are definitely something pertaining to the manuscript domain, with layout/publishing programs traditionally in charge of placing them somewhere in the page. The implementation of InDesign, inherited from wordprocessors, is in my view very obtuse, compared to what a page composer can do of them.

As for PageMaker, I just opened version 6.5 for Mac. By exploring the menus, I can't find footnotes. As far as I remember, the earliest versions of InDesign didn't have them, as didn't have them the earlier QuarkXPress.

Foonotes are an area where I would like Publisher not to 'catch-up', but to innovate, and make this feature one worthy of a layout program, and not a pale imitation of a wordprocessor.

Paolo

 

 

[firstdefence]

4 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

Foonotes are an area where I would like Publisher not to 'catch-up', but to innovated

In what way would you like footnotes to be innovated?

[PaoloT]

43 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

In what way would you like footnotes to be innovated?

Footnotes in a word processor are simply placed at the bottom of a page, separated from the body text with a line.

In books (especially art books), magazines, and in general publications with an innovative design, footnotes are often placed in the margin of the page, free or in boxes. They are an element of design, that contributes to the building of the page layout.

In word processors, body text and footnotes are linked by numbers or symbols. In book design, when the note sits in the margin, sometimes this reference is not used, since the note frame is clearly linked to the nearby body text.

Apart for Mellel (I think), word processors allow just a single stream of footnotes and one of endnotes. Some academic books require more streams. For example, one for the Author's notes, and one for the Translator's notes. Sometimes there are endnotes at the end of the chapter, and endnotes at the end of the book.

Word processor developers expect that layout artists place footnotes and endnotes as they want. Publisher could help the page designers with more options already in the software.

Paolo

 

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, Granddaddy said:

I've never seen a word processing software environment that did not have footnotes, endnotes, table of contents, indexes, headers, footers, running titles, and page numbering capability. All these word processing functions long preceded the invention of desktop publishing software.

Well some word processing software had some of those capabilities early, others only partly, or not at all. Also in the beginnings most of the common word processors didn't offered the stability here for longer technical manuals, huge book publishing and in general technical writing/publishing. - On the other side, DTP software for real technical writing/publishing was first mostly only available for RISC based Workstations (Sun, Apollo, Dec, HP, Silicon Graphics etc.) and bloody expensive in contrast to more common word processing software.

AFAI remember it, so just a rough time list here only ...

Some word processor software from early DOS-times on:

• 1978 - 1997 WordStar
• 1982 - 2021 WordPerfect
• 1983 - 2021 MS Word
• 1985 - 2021 StarWriter, OpenOffice Writer, LibreOffice Writer
• etc.

Some DTP & technical publishing software from early times on:

• 1981 Interleaf TPS (Technical Publishing Software)
• 1985 Aldus PageMaker (later Adobe PageMaker)
• 1986 Corel Ventura
• 1987 FrameMaker (later Adobe FrameMaker)
• 1987 QuarkXPress
• 1990 PagePlus
• 1999 Adobe InDesign
• 2018 Affinity Publisher
• etc.

And then we have nroff/troff/groff and TeX/LaTeX things which maybe are worth to be named on their own:

• 1960 Unix nroff/troff
• 1977 TeX starts
• 1980 LaTeX starts
• 1990 Gnu groff
• etc.

 

 

[JGD]

On 11/17/2021 at 7:52 PM, Old Bruce said:

Had to read this several times. Are you saying that Footnotes is something that is not from the typewriter emulation part of word processors? I would think that word processors had this feature fairly early on in their evolution. Pre DTP applications. Can't say for certain as I am just going on my memory which is fallible.

I mean manual typewriters had this functionality, I just had to be careful and pay attention. I will admit that I frequently had to retype a page.

Ah, yes. I am absolutely not calling that into question, and seeing how I only started using DTP apps in 2003, with QuarkXPress 6.x, I personally wouldn't know any better.

My point was just that DTP apps intended to emulate age-old conventions… including footnotes, which, yes, had existed in metal typesetting for a loooooong time.

[JGD]

On 11/18/2021 at 9:40 AM, PaoloT said:

Footnotes in a word processor are simply placed at the bottom of a page, separated from the body text with a line.

In books (especially art books), magazines, and in general publications with an innovative design, footnotes are often placed in the margin of the page, free or in boxes. They are an element of design, that contributes to the building of the page layout.

In word processors, body text and footnotes are linked by numbers or symbols. In book design, when the note sits in the margin, sometimes this reference is not used, since the note frame is clearly linked to the nearby body text.

Apart for Mellel (I think), word processors allow just a single stream of footnotes and one of endnotes. Some academic books require more streams. For example, one for the Author's notes, and one for the Translator's notes. Sometimes there are endnotes at the end of the chapter, and endnotes at the end of the book.

Word processor developers expect that layout artists place footnotes and endnotes as they want. Publisher could help the page designers with more options already in the software.

Paolo

 

All fair points, both on this and your earlier post. I like your idea, and would very much prefer to use margin notes in many of my multi-column layouts. AFAIK, those would also be a total PITA to achieve in APub in a semi-automated fashion, but do correct me if I'm wrong.

[lacerto]

On 11/18/2021 at 11:40 AM, PaoloT said:

Word processor developers expect that layout artists place footnotes and endnotes as they want. Publisher could help the page designers with more options already in the software.

Perhaps so, but Publisher already has support for multiple publication-wide (or more restricted, if liked) text flow containers (whether placed on master pages or "ad-hoc" on regular pages), with per-page resizable frames, which makes creation of such complex annotation streams "possible" (more easily than in InDesign).This would work reasonably well already in current version of Publisher in context of laying out finished text, so for layout artists; but would not of course be adequate in context of content creation or editing itself.

We have years of experience in laying out complex scientific books (e.g. doctoral dissertations in art history) with high aesthetic standards (with much illustrations, photos, etc.), where different kinds of side column notes systems are often used. Such systems are not supported in InDesign CS6 which we still use as our main page layout app. I am not aware if the current CC versions have any improvements in this area (other than full support of end notes), so their effective use in CS6 requires some fiddling with master page column widths to first get initial auto-flow of notes done (simulating footnotes but actually imported as endnotes) in side columns, and then using styles and column breaks to get note references in body text to synch with the actual notes in side columns.  As the notes are not automated (or synched), scripts are used to renumber the notes after inserting new notes or removing existing ones, which is an easy and safe method once notes in both parts are carefully tagged with character styles. So this is what is most important to have in any page layout app that wishes to be useful in laying out (and maintaining, meaning possibility to add/remove notes) complex annotation. Automatic linked note system with multiple streams would of course be "nice to have", and would be an important feature in creation and editing of such notes, but not a necessity when laying out such text.

While I can think several ways tasks involved in this kind of complex annotation could be facilitated by software, I cannot imagine AI or full-featured set of annotation-related settings being so clever or comprehensive to be able to significantly help in actual composition of such complex flow of texts, especially when there is also other content to fit in. An automated system is very important when using a footnote-based system as it is a necessity to be able to continue footnotes from one page to another, and have the height of the footnote section automatically adjusted on demand. We regularly create e.g. legal texts where footnote section can nearly fill the whole page or spread at times, and laying out such texts without adjustable automation would be more or less impossible. But more complex annotation systems, especially ones using multiple text flows, along with highly varied graphic content, makes organising the different elements in aesthetically satisfying way a true challenge, often comparable with laying out magazine articles. Column widths e.g. typically need to be manually readjusted practically for each page and spread simply to be able to fit in varied number and length of notes, but also because of need to fit in much other content.

Flexibility would probably be the most valued aspect of a fully featured complex annotation system so that it could be used equally well by authors and editors of text, and those who are responsible of laying it out with the rest of the content.

[Old Bruce]

The more I think about this the more problems I see with it being implemented in a robust manner.

The biggest problem with implementing notes of any sort is that each software package has its own proprietary system of storing the information about the notes, foot or end. Numbering has to be maintained, if at a late stage a note is added to the middle of chapter three then the notes following must have their numbers increased. 

The text comes into Publisher and is presented with superscripted numbers in the text and those numbers refer to the notes with their own superscripted numbers. Somewhere in the Publisher document there has to be the original text with the code for the numbering of the notes. It cannot be a simple here is a note 1 and another 2. Those numbers are just text, they have no connection the actual notes.

There is going to have to be a whole parallel level of hidden text inside / alongside the presented text flow. It is the hidden text that will have to be altered in order to add a note.

Every MS Word, RTF and IDML file will have to be parsed in order to get the text into Publisher's new doubled format. Now we have to consider how to handle text from a copy and paste from Word or any other word processor, or even a website.

What to do when presented with superscripted numbers because of "two cubed" AKA as 2^3. Is that the third note?

Text frames will also have to be rewritten to include zero sized footnote frames in each one. These footnote frames will need to be smart enough to tell the next frame to expand its footnote frame and accept the overflow from this note. Not to mention that the footnote frames will have to be smart enough to find the notes referred to in the text flow.

There is the desire for marginalia, so the footnote frames will need to smart enough to copy themselves and place that copy in the designated margin area, creating and overflowing to a new frame on the next page when necessary.