How to create a footnote in Affinity Publisher?

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

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

I would always also take a look at how other software, with similar frame-concepts does and solve this, that might give some ideas here for the more challenging implementation parts.

As for example how do they conceptual handle it ...

• Create and edit footnotes
• Format footnotes
• Footnotes and endnotes

6 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

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?

During a plain clipboard based copy/paste you will probably just get the related text part portions and would have to re-setup/format all that in Publisher anyway. Since it's not the same like parsing a complete/whole file, where you then hopefully know the complete file format from.

[MikeTO]

On 12/1/2021 at 11:33 AM, Old Bruce said:

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. 

A page layout app can add support for creating footnotes without adding support for importing footnotes. Just being able to create footnotes would satisfy many customers.

On 12/1/2021 at 11:33 AM, Old Bruce said:

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.

If a page layout app supports the same footnote features then importing from Word, RTF, and IDML is straightforward. Footnotes are stored like index markers, there's a marker which points to other data.

Copying text from another app is a different matter - it depends what the receiving app can read from the clipboard. This is less likely.

Copying text from another website can't create footnotes - if you selected a range of text with a superscripted number then the page layout app would have to guess if it's a footnote but in any case it wouldn't be able to retrieve the footnote if the note is not part of the selected text range. I'm not saying it's impossible for scenarios where the user selected the marker and the note but adding this capability would lead to ongoing tech support issues given that every website can format footnotes in a different manner.

On 12/1/2021 at 11:33 AM, Old Bruce said:

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.

Footnotes go into the same frame, not a separate frame, because the text frame could be any shape, not just a rectangle. When the text flow engine encounters a footnote marker it then composes the footnote text for inclusion at the bottom of the current frame, adding it to a queue to potentially render there. Then the engine continues composing the current paragraph line by line until it hits the space allocated for the footnote(s). The keep with previous/next settings make this more complicated than this sounds. It's possible that the space allocated for the footnote text would push the associated footnote marker to the next page and in that case the marker and note both have to be pushed to the next page, leaving a white space gap on the current page. The worst case scenario is if the marker and note won't fit into the next frame either. For example, if the marker is in the first line of the frame and the note is so long that they're both pushed to the next frame which is the same size so they're pushed again and again. This is why footnote features usually include the ability to split notes across multiple pages and if you implement footnotes without this feature you have to truncate long notes and warn the user.

The text editing engine would also need changes - the simple approach is to allow editing of notes in a dialog like index marks. The footnote 'zone' of a frame would be non-editable. The deluxe approach is to allow modal editing of notes inline so that you could access the regular character and paragraph formatting features, but this adds much more text flow engine complexity.

There's a reason page layout apps usually don't include footnotes in version 1 and they get added down the road. They're not harder than what has already been done but they are a pain.

[Old Bruce]

Out of the gate I would like something robust and versatile.

5 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

A page layout app can add support for creating footnotes without adding support for importing footnotes. Just being able to create footnotes would satisfy many customers.

Cue howls of outrage at not being able to import the two or three hundred footnotes in a Word document.

9 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Footnotes go into the same frame, not a separate frame, because the text frame could be any shape, not just a rectangle...

Then we will wind up with a long stretch of text interspersed with notes removed from their markers as just text. I do think that a dual frame method would be best. 

Again, I want something robust.

[Kevin Scally]

On 10/22/2021 at 9:42 AM, Finrach said:

I'm all but done with Adobe now (just the free Bridge and Acrobat left)

I managed to get rid of Acrobat  Pro as well. Readle PDFExpert is doing what I need - at a sane price 

[Baal]

Hello, do you know when the footnotes function will be implemented in "Affinity Publisher"? Are there any announcements or even plans to deal with the topic? The function is absolutely crucial for books.

[Komatös]

@Baal

There is no time announcement when and if footnote/endnote will be available in Publisher.

[Criss]

This certainly will never take the place of having a real footnote feature, but for those who are struggling with a huge number of footnotes in documents, consider getting Keyboard Maestro, and putting together a macro to create a text box at the bottom of a document and paste the clipboard into it, then return you to the move tool. You can assign a hot key to the text style for footnotes and have the macro apply it as well.  If you're working on one big document, you likely can have KM do all the heavy lifting and create the text box with correct Text Frame settings for runaround, of the right width, adequate height, in the correct position so all you have to do is make sure all the text fits & there's no overflow. 

I'd take 80 keypresses over doing all those steps 80 times.

For those not willing to/able to get KM, consider creating a footnote text box asset with all the frame settings for runaround etc. and then you can drag it from the Asset pallet to the page you need it on. In fact using an Asset might even be the right answer even when using KM to automate placing it and adjusting it.

If they could add a feature to Text Wrap that wraps to the text contents rather than the bounding box that would certainly help, you wouldn't have to adjust the box height — you might be able to make the macro double-click the center top resize handle to resize the textbox to fit the content. Apparently that's how Publisher does "fitting" — there's no menu or contextual menu option for it I think.

[GuyMiklos]

When footnotes/endnotes is part of Affinity Publisher, I will buy it. I am patiently waiting. Thank you very much MikeTO for explaining some of the difficulties in implementing this functionality.

I agree with one of the posters above, who said that creating foot/end-notes is the primary need, and that importing these can be added at a later date, since they often need reformatting anyway.

My technical book, is 75% finished. All my footnotes are in-line, awaiting completion of the books text. Only then will I choose which software to do the layout. I used QuarkXpress for 6 years in a previous job, and loved it. I tried PageMaker and found it laborious and awkward. Some years later I used Adobe InDesign, until Adobe switched to subscription licensing. My hope is that Affinity Publisher will have foot/end-note functionality implemented by the time my book content is ready to be laid out.

[simloc]

I also didn't check first if footnotes, indices, and table-of-contents were supported because I assumed they would be implicitly included in a desktop publishing program.

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @simloc

Index and table of contents functionalities do exist in Publisher, but footnote functionality does not (as you have found), however it is a popular addition that Serif are very well aware of.

[Criss]

footnote, index, TOC are all included in the v2 that was recently released.

Now we're waiting on cross-references. Maybe the functionality is in there. Going to have to poke around or find documentation to figure it out but it's not on the features list. But adding foot/end/side notes is a start.  Let's hope the cross-references are in there too.

[MikeTO]

17 minutes ago, Criss said:

footnote, index, TOC are all included in the v2 that was recently released.

Now we're waiting on cross-references. Maybe the functionality is in there. Going to have to poke around or find documentation to figure it out but it's not on the features list. But adding foot/end/side notes is a start.  Let's hope the cross-references are in there too.

No cross references yet.

[GuyMiklos]

On 11/16/2022 at 12:22 PM, MikeTO said:

No cross references yet.

Unfortunately not.

I can't finish my book using AffPublisher without cross references.