Footnotes are FUNDAMENTAL to any DTP. When will we get it?

[Norway4T]

Lately, laying out books and papers, I find myself back in horrible, old-fashioned highly limited word processors because of one fundamental deficiency with Affinity Publisher: The lack of footnotes.

When producing a long document with a lot of footnotes, and updating and rearranging those footnotes continuously, it is nearly impossible getting it correct without an automatic footnotes system, keeping tabs on footnotes numbering. I would love doing this work in Affinity Publisher, with its richness of layout elements, but I find myself confined to my old-fashioned word processors, simply because of that simple, but fundamental feature.

If I may suggest one fundamental, major improvement of Affinity Publisher it is a automatic footnotes system.
I imagine three different modes:
1) A system where, when activating the footnote function, it adds a consecutive numbering in superscript at the point of insertion, adds a delimiter (which can be preselected such as a no line, short line, medium line, long line, or customized string of lines and/or characters) at the bottom of the page, then add the same consecutive number in superscript and place the cursor right after it, ready to add the footnote text.
2) A system as the above, but with the ability to change numbering from latin characters to roman numerals or any other character the user may want to input to denote a special footnote.
3) Same as the two above, but with numbering starting from 1 for each new chapter.

In addition, footnotes should also have the ability to be collected in a common field at the end of the document with the possibility to expand on each, and manipulate them as any other index.

But a very good start would be implementing the above until and including 1). The rest is just icing on the cake. Although such functions would be very nice to have — a basic system as 1) is absolutely basic and essential, and I do hope the Affinity team focus on getting this added ASAP, as it is a MAJOR headache not having this basic feature in an otherwise complete & brilliant DTP such as Affinity Publisher!

[RickyO]

On 9/8/2021 at 4:46 AM, Norway4T said:

Lately, laying out books and papers, I find myself back in horrible, old-fashioned highly limited word processors because of one fundamental deficiency with Affinity Publisher: The lack of footnotes.

When producing a long document with a lot of footnotes, and updating and rearranging those footnotes continuously, it is nearly impossible getting it correct without an automatic footnotes system, keeping tabs on footnotes numbering. I would love doing this work in Affinity Publisher, with its richness of layout elements, but I find myself confined to my old-fashioned word processors, simply because of that simple, but fundamental feature.

If I may suggest one fundamental, major improvement of Affinity Publisher it is a automatic footnotes system.
I imagine three different modes:
1) A system where, when activating the footnote function, it adds a consecutive numbering in superscript at the point of insertion, adds a delimiter (which can be preselected such as a no line, short line, medium line, long line, or customized string of lines and/or characters) at the bottom of the page, then add the same consecutive number in superscript and place the cursor right after it, ready to add the footnote text.
2) A system as the above, but with the ability to change numbering from latin characters to roman numerals or any other character the user may want to input to denote a special footnote.
3) Same as the two above, but with numbering starting from 1 for each new chapter.

In addition, footnotes should also have the ability to be collected in a common field at the end of the document with the possibility to expand on each, and manipulate them as any other index.

But a very good start would be implementing the above until and including 1). The rest is just icing on the cake. Although such functions would be very nice to have — a basic system as 1) is absolutely basic and essential, and I do hope the Affinity team focus on getting this added ASAP, as it is a MAJOR headache not having this basic feature in an otherwise complete & brilliant DTP such as Affinity Publisher!

It would be extremely helpful.

[PaoloT]

Footnotes have been asked several times. But since we are here, I’ll add my request for a parallel stream of notes (for original, editorial, and translator streams of notes); and a parallel system of footnotes and endnotes — these latter at the end of the chapter or the book.

Paolo

 

[Qtanda]

I am confuse. If I go to Text / Baseline, I find the subscripts. Somebody Un-confuse me on this matter?  Gracias!

 

[Komatös]

38 minutes ago, Qtanda said:

I am confuse. If I go to Text / Baseline, I find the subscripts. Somebody Un-confuse me on this matter?  Gracias!

 

Footnotes and endnotes are independent functions in other DTP programmes which, when a marker is set, automatically set up footnotes or endnotes after the last paragraph (footnotes) or at the end of the page (endnote), depending on the marker.

More experienced users will be able to explain it in more detail.

 

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, Komatös said:

Footnotes and endnotes are independent functions in other DTP programmes which, when a marker is set, automatically set up footnotes or endnotes after the last paragraph (footnotes) or at the end of the page (endnote), depending on the marker.

More experienced users will be able to explain it in more detail.

 

A foot note is at the Foot of the Page. An endnote is at the end of the book, section, chapter.

Endnotes are easy. They are all at the end of the book, section, chapter, just add more pages.

Footnotes are hard. You must create room at the bottom of the page for the note, sometimes there is not enough room on that page so you must continue it on the next page. Then the editor says add/subtract these words in the first chapter, now you must redo all the footnotes on all the pages that follow because the number 7 note is no longer on the page with the text having the 7 in it. Then the editor says remove note 7, you have to renumber all the notes in the text and renumber all the foot notes and reflow all the text moving the notes into proper places again.

It is not uncommon to have both footnotes and endnotes. 

[Intuos5]

It’s a must have feature for publishing and creating book layouts as well as academic papers where sources need to be referenced back to the original text.

I would like to add to this by requesting the option to place foot/ endnotes in text frames that do not contain the original text, that way, a separate frame can be lay-out and formatted in a different manner to the main text frame. 

By the way, these things are a chore in Indesign, it works terribly there, so it may very well be a key feature (along side the live flowing text) that would make potential customers considering adopting the Affinity suite over Adobe’s.

[sfriedberg]

2 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

I would like to add to this by requesting the option to place foot/ endnotes in text frames that do not contain the original text, that way, a separate frame can be lay-out and formatted in a different manner to the main text frame. 

Yes, this is highly desirable.  It's how I am handling my current manually inserted footnotes in AffPub, and offers some leverage to fix things in the event that the automated flow/overflow calculations don't produce a pleasing effect.

[cyberlizard]

both footnotes and endnotes are available in:

Serif PagePlus X9

Scribus (free)

as well as InDesign and QuarkXpress.

Steve

[Mithferion]

When? One day. How will they be? You better put attention to the Beta once it’s out to give your comments on improvements/features/bugs, because if you simply wait to the initial release it might not be what you expect and you’ll be even more frustrated.

Best regards!

[Old Bruce]

14 hours ago, Mithferion said:

You better put attention to the Beta once it’s out to give your comments on improvements/features/bugs, because if you simply wait to the initial release it might not be what you expect and you’ll be even more frustrated.

I remember the first iteration of Studio Presets. They were utter garbage, unbelievable how useless it was.

[RickyO]

I'm just curious what the purpose of your comment is?  Seems a bit severe.