Two sets of footnotes

[philipt18]

I am annotating a book that already has some footnotes. Not many, I think 9, but I want to differentiate them from my own footnotes (of which there are over 1200). In the book, the 9 footnotes use an *, and then have the note at the bottom of the page, but there's no simple way to add those and my numbered footnotes.

One solution I came up with was to have a different master page for pages with footnotes, and make the text block a bit smaller, with a separate text block on the bottom to put the original footnote. My footnotes then appear automatically and the original one shows up below it. The problem with this is that the original footnote is now below my footnotes, so it's separated from the original text. That's kind of backwards. It would make it harder for the reader to understand that those note were written by the original author.

Another solution would be to stop and start the numbering of the footnotes, and insert an * in between the numbered footnotes. This, however, would mean the * is in the middle of my footnotes, and it's a very complicated way to do it, and would likely break if any changes needed to be made.

I'd really like to find a simple solution that allowed me to insert the footnote below the text, didn't mess up the flow, and allowed my footnotes to be shown below the original footnote. Anyone have any ideas?

[MikeTO]

Hi Philip, I would simply use a Custom footnote for the original ones. Number all of them sequentially but add an asterisk for the original ones:

1 First footnote
2* Second footnote - this one is an original
3 Third footnote

This is easy to do - just add the asterisk after the note number symbol in the Number Text field - you can do this for both the main text and note body if you like.

If you really want it to go 1 (new footnote), * (original footnote), 2 (new footnote), then replace the note number symbol with an asterisk for the original ones. Restart note numbering after each original one. But if you start adding and removing notes all over the document, you'll likely forget to update the starting note numbers so it's an opportunity to make mistakes.

Good luck

[philipt18]

Thank you. How do you add an asterisk to the Number Text field?

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, philipt18 said:

Thank you. How do you add an asterisk to the Number Text field?

Just click in the field and delete the blue # symbol, then type a regular asterisk and press Return.

[philipt18]

Got it, in the Custom Footnotes tab.

I did notice something odd. Not sure if it's a bug or not, but if you change the # to an * and then click the Superscript checkbox, the * goes back to a #. If you click into a different field first, and then click the Superscript checkbox, it doesn't change.

[MikeTO]

26 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Got it, in the Custom Footnotes tab.

I did notice something odd. Not sure if it's a bug or not, but if you change the # to an * and then click the Superscript checkbox, the * goes back to a #. If you click into a different field first, and then click the Superscript checkbox, it doesn't change.

This is a new bug. Change the value for any text field in the Notes panel (except for Start Number At) and then without pressing Tab or Return or clicking in another text field, select any checkbox in the panel and the entered value will be lost.

[philipt18]

On 4/16/2024 at 6:16 PM, MikeTO said:

This is a new bug. Change the value for any text field in the Notes panel (except for Start Number At) and then without pressing Tab or Return or clicking in another text field, select any checkbox in the panel and the entered value will be lost.

 

So should someone post this in the bug group?

[MikeTO]

9 hours ago, philipt18 said:

So should someone post this in the bug group?

I've done that now:

 

[philipt18]

Ok, so now that I made that change, how do I find those footnotes with the * instead of the number? Clearly I should have set up a different inherited style for those footnotes so I could search by style, but I didn't. I can't search for the * because it's in the field, and doesn't show up in searches (maybe it should).

On a related note, when looking at search results (such as 1237 results with my footnote style), is there a way to move to the next result? Some programs would use command-G to skip to the next result. Some programs would allow you to click on a result and then arrow to the next result (in Publisher the arrow moves in the text, not in the results). Neither of these work in Publisher. Is there a way to move through the results?

[MikeTO]

5 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Ok, so now that I made that change, how do I find those footnotes with the * instead of the number? Clearly I should have set up a different inherited style for those footnotes so I could search by style, but I didn't. I can't search for the * because it's in the field, and doesn't show up in searches (maybe it should).

There is no way to do that if there's no difference in style. I suggest going back and finding them manually and giving them a custom style so that you can find them in the future.

7 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

On a related note, when looking at search results (such as 1237 results with my footnote style), is there a way to move to the next result? Some programs would use command-G to skip to the next result. Some programs would allow you to click on a result and then arrow to the next result (in Publisher the arrow moves in the text, not in the results). Neither of these work in Publisher. Is there a way to move through the results?

Yes, with the Text > Find Next command which has a keyboard shortcut.

Cheers

[Old Bruce]

7 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

On a related note, when looking at search results (such as 1237 results with my footnote style), is there a way to move to the next result? Some programs would use command-G to skip to the next result. Some programs would allow you to click on a result and then arrow to the next result (in Publisher the arrow moves in the text, not in the results). Neither of these work in Publisher. Is there a way to move through the results?

I have my Keyboard Shortcuts set to use Command + Option + G and Command + Option + Shift + G for Text > Find Next and Text > Find Previous.

[philipt18]

Oddly I tried setting it to Command-> for next, and it accepted it, but when I used it, it went to the text (but worked normally if chosen from the menu). I've set it to Command-Option-G per Old Bruce, thanks. Now to make my way through 1237 footnotes to find the 9 I need.

[philipt18]

By the way, does anyone else find it odd that the order of the footnotes found are random per spread? i.e. they are in the order of the spreads, but within the spreads, the order is random.

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

By the way, does anyone else find it odd that the order of the footnotes found are random per spread? i.e. they are in the order of the spreads, but within the spreads, the order is random.

Footnotes will be numbered sequentially within a (1, one) text frame so if you have multiple text frames with footnotes the sequential numbering will start with the text frame which is bottommost in the layers panel. Then the numbers will move up a layer and continue. 

[philipt18]

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Footnotes will be numbered sequentially within a (1, one) text frame so if you have multiple text frames with footnotes the sequential numbering will start with the text frame which is bottommost in the layers panel. Then the numbers will move up a layer and continue. 

 

Yes, but they're not layered in the same order as the footnotes themselves.

[MikeTO]

5 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Yes, but they're not layered in the same order as the footnotes themselves.

There's no way around this, if your TOC headings are in separate frames you need to stack them from the bottom in the order you want them to appear.

If you really can't stack them in the order required because of something to do with the design, some people fake it. They detach the heading from its style so it won't appear in the TOC and then add a hidden frame with the TOC heading but made invisible.

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Yes, but they're not layered in the same order as the footnotes themselves.

I honestly do not understand what this means. What isn't "layered in the same order"? What are the items that are "layered"?

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

your TOC headings

????

This is about footnotes. At least I think it is.

[MikeTO]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

????

This is about footnotes. At least I think it is.

Haha, thanks. I had TOCs on the brain as I just answered a TOC question.

Philip, if you're able to share a screenshot of the footnote situation perhaps one of us can come up with a suggestion. But there's no good workaround if you want footnotes numbered visually from the top to bottom of the page rather than from bottom of the layer stack to the top, from the start of a story to the end, from the start of the first pinned object...

[philipt18]

6 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I honestly do not understand what this means. What isn't "layered in the same order"? What are the items that are "layered"?

 

Let's say on a given spread you have ten footnotes, numbered 1-10. Let's say 1-5 on the page on the left of the spread, and 6-10 on the right page. Starting at number 1, you would think if you Find Next, that you would be taken to number 2, then 3, etc. In fact, there is no set order to which footnote you are taken to. It seems completely random. It seems the order might be related to the order of the layers of the footnotes, but those are set by Affinity automatically, and as far as I can tell cannot be changed. If that's the case, then Affinity should be keeping them in the order of the footnotes on the page, not just layering them randomly.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, philipt18 said:

Let's say on a given spread you have ten footnotes, numbered 1-10. Let's say 1-5 on the page on the left of the spread, and 6-10 on the right page. Starting at number 1, you would think if you Find Next, that you would be taken to number 2, then 3, etc. In fact, there is no set order to which footnote you are taken to. It seems completely random. It seems the order might be related to the order of the layers of the footnotes, but those are set by Affinity automatically, and as far as I can tell cannot be changed. If that's the case, then Affinity should be keeping them in the order of the footnotes on the page, not just layering them randomly.

The order for Find is the order they were created in and it's not something you can change. I think Serif didn't worry about the stacking order for footnotes in a frame because they're numbered in the order of the reference markers and it all looks the same so why should it matter. But for Find, it will seem as if it's a random order.

It's probably not a bug but I do think it would be better if the app employed some housekeeping to keep the note layers in the logical order. I do a lot of batch clean up on my sidenotes and the order is always a bit confusing.

[philipt18]

Here's an interesting twist. I separated out one section of my Index into a separate section. When I exported to PDF with hyperlinks, and then imported to Kindle Create, it found the hyperlinks from the main Index section, but not the section I separated. I actually separated both from the actual index which I created, and then deleted the real index, so it wouldn't update while I was working. So really no difference between the two, yet one has working page links, and one doesn't.

[philipt18]

I double-checked the original file, and indeed there are no hyperlinks in Apub, but there seems to be no explanation why one section has and another doesn't.

[philipt18]

Okay, I redid the second index and it is working now, except there are some weird things. In the index the page number are links. But some of the words are also links, and they go to the wrong places. The links are not in the PDF, just in Kindle Create. Super annoying.