Footnotes/Endnotes

[Pyanepsion]

15 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

[Here are all the forms of notes] that you know about or have seen.

It would be nice if you didn't keep the other formats you know to yourself.

15 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

An example of a text and foot notes on one line is shown below.

In your case, I would be unable to indicate the customs in a font that uses a non-Latin, non-Greek or non-Ogamic spelling.
If I have understood your problem correctly, you should perhaps look at glosses instead. The glossnotes are often very appropriate for inserting short notes (definition, translation, etc.) below a word. There are often several per line. They have the particularity that the call for a note is not always necessary.

Glossary note for translations (in grey)

Glossary note for definitions (in red)

Glossary note for explanations (in grey)

Continuous footnotes on the same line are unusual for the reasons given above, but not rare at all. There are two kinds, either immediately following the previous note or after a small blank. Separation by a tab character is obviously not appropriate. The first (just after the previous) is a special case of the second (after a blank). These presentations are often seen in contracts, instructions manuals, and posters.

Footnote in a tariff

[Pyanepsion]

34 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

So you agree, and simultaneously you contradict your earlier post

You obviously did not read or understand my previous post! I said: ‘This is a very unusual arrangement [because] but the succession of notes on the same line does occur.’

[MJWHM]

38 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

You obviously did not read your previous post. My emphasis:

I accept that you wrote a succession of notes on the same line does occur, but you immediately contradict yourself with your use of the word 'all'.

You can't have it both ways. 'All' in English does not mean 'nearly all' or 'most' or 'the vast majority'. 'All' means every single instance. It is a common error that I see here in the forums when there is a call from some people asking for a feature when they write something like 'users want...'. Without qualification, 'users' means 'all users'. It would be better if they wrote 'some users' or 'many users', both of which would be fair and probably accurate. But '[all] users' is usually not accurate. In your sentence above with the use of the word 'all' you seem to have made this mistake.

I hate to split hairs (well, perhaps not) but the use of 'users' does not mean all users, any more than saying that 'humans eat meat'  means that all humans do so. The ambivalence of the form is at once its strength and its weakness. But this really does not forward the please for AP to implement the features they originally provided in Serif PagePlus X9.  I am becoming convinced that the management are not interested in publications other than magazines and flyers, which is seriously disappointing if true. I still use X9, and it works. I think that of it ever is unusable because of a Windows update, I will retain a computer solely for using it.

[Pyanepsion]

@LondonSquirrel

I understand your confusion better.

A little history will help you understand.

A note is a statement of variable length (one word is enough) on a more or less precise segment of the text, and placed either opposite or in reference to this segment. The distinction between the different notes is based on their position on the page and not on their content (one paragraph per note, or one paragraph for all notes).

Historically, the note was placed in the middle of the page (in a large rectangle), and was often surrounded, or sometimes filled in, by smaller written details. It was called a gloss. I have not quoted this format, as this type of note hardly exists any more.

The note itself evolved to be placed in the gutter, which became wider and wider and then single when the text frame was split into two columns.

Leaves became wider with the progress of mechanisation and, thanks to the printing press, the writing became smaller in size. Several gutters then appeared on each page. This new type of intracolumn notes did not really catch on.

The presentation was still rather confusing, however, and one day someone pushed the notes to the periphery of the text, to the right and left margins of the page. These are our current marginal notes. The short definitions of the old glosses were then grouped together to form the glossary.

The marginal notes then gradually increased until they reached the bottom of the main text. Once there, they took up the whole page. This was a revelation. The note could become very long when it reached the bottom of the page.

Eventually, most marginal notes gradually became infrapaginal notes, i.e. footnotes.

However, because of their length, their layout at the bottom of the page was more complicated than the previous types of notes, and some printers grouped them at the end of a logical section, mainly for economic reasons.  This is how endnotes came into being.

But what about the distinction between notes in paragraph form and notes written in sequence?

A paragraph is easier to reproduce in DTP (ancient and modern printing) than a succession of continuous notes. Paragraph notes have been so popularised by Word that, whatever the type of note above, they are now subdivided into paragraph notes and continuous notes.

Now, there is a third type of note which I have not mentioned, but which, superstitiously, no DTP designer will acknowledge exists, because everyone who has used it has gone mad.  These are the notes of notes... which can themselves call up other notes or sub-notes. No, I'm kidding, but these are a mess.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Pyanepsion
Clarification of what content is.

[Trevor A]

This discussion is becoming unpleasant.

If the purpose is to attack other people, that is not what this forum is meant to be about.

[Mod Edit: Removed]

[Dan C]

Please note I have edited certain posts above (see: [Mod Edit: Removed]) as I believe these comments are becoming too personal and don't abide by our Guidelines.

We ask that threads remain civil and appropriate at all times, we do not wish to stifle conversations such as these, but should this continue we will be forced to intervene further - such as locking the thread.

Many thanks for your understanding.

[Ralph]

I think @MJWHM's last post had a couple of typos which, if I'm right, gives a rather different slant to the sentence:

"The ambivalence of the form is at once its strength and its weakness. But this really does not forward the please for AP to implement the features they originally provided in Serif PagePlus X9."

Change "form" to "forum" and "please" to "pleas" and the sentence focusses on the objective (as I see it) of the forum - what Affinity can (or can not) do. Apologies @MJWHMif I have mis-understood you.

In my opinion, Serif should have (in the distant past!) provided a basic (open to interpretation) set of actions for all the functions of a DTP and then progressively "dug deeper" into each. What I see is some functions with incredible depth - some so deep that I have never heard of them! - and others (like Footnotes) which have been ignored.

Of course I would like Footnotes with the detail raised by a number of correspondents, but I don't want to wait till the twenty second century until every detail is incorporated. I am happy to modify my working practices to accommodate Affinity's short-comings.

Long Live PagePlus.

[MJWHM]

32 minutes ago, Ralph said:

I think @MJWHM's last post had a couple of typos which, if I'm right, gives a rather different slant to the sentence:

"The ambivalence of the form is at once its strength and its weakness. But this really does not forward the please for AP to implement the features they originally provided in Serif PagePlus X9."

Change "form" to "forum" and "please" to "pleas" and the sentence focusses on the objective (as I see it) of the forum - what Affinity can (or can not) do. Apologies @MJWHMif I have mis-understood you.

In my opinion, Serif should have (in the distant past!) provided a basic (open to interpretation) set of actions for all the functions of a DTP and then progressively "dug deeper" into each. What I see is some functions with incredible depth - some so deep that I have never heard of them! - and others (like Footnotes) which have been ignored.

Of course I would like Footnotes with the detail raised by a number of correspondents, but I don't want to wait till the twenty second century until every detail is incorporated. I am happy to modify my working practices to accommodate Affinity's short-comings.

Long Live PagePlus.

Thank you, Ralph. Struggling with a cold at present and one is a typo but tother isn't. I actually did mean 'form' but I was trying to bring it back to the central issue, as you inferred. At my age I really do not see why there has to be techiness in these forums when we are all essentially seeking the same thing. Our differences are mainly in the comlexity which the footnotes/endnotes need to exhibit. Life is too short.

[fde101]

On 3/27/2022 at 12:07 PM, Pyanepsion said:

• Footnotes. These are found at the bottom of the column or at the bottom of the page of the note. In some countries, they are so long that they sometimes become a second book in the book (the first time, it made me feel funny, because in France, these notes are often very short, like "N.D.A.: Voir La Rivière pourpre chez le même éditeur").
• Mediannotes of old Bibles. The pages of these bibles are divided into two columns with a large central gutter. These notes are very short.

Not just "old" bibles - and it should be noted that these techniques are frequently used together.  The "mediannotes" as you are referring to them are commonly used for cross-references to other related verses while footnotes are used to present commentary and/or notes from the translators related to how the translation relates to the original-language text, etc.  As a result, this highlights a need to support multiple "streams" of notes of different types presented simultaneously within the same story.

[Trevor A]

fde101, thank you for adding this clarification.  The combination of a central column for cross-references and footnotes for anything from short notes to detailed commentary, depending on the edition, is quite common and very popular with readers, and the readership is likely to be higher than with many academic publications.

Lest someone suggest that Affinity Publisher would not be used for preparing a Bible for printing, I would say, "Why not?"  I used it for my edition of a New Testament manuscript (with footnotes added manually!), and there are quite a few people producing new translations of individual books from the Bible, which could ideally be prepared for publication in Affinity Publisher (subject to the addition of a certain feature in the program!).

Trevor

[Pyanepsion]

@fde101 Yes. It’s true, I had forgotten about it. I’ve seen it a few times. Thank.

@Trevor A Yes! There are always people (who should obviously be ignored) to tell us how to do without which we still need. 😄

[Pedrober]

Unbelievable but true: just now, in 2022, I have received an InDesign file where footnotes are still formatted by hand, in frames created for that purpose!

[fde101]

59 minutes ago, Pedrober said:

Unbelievable but true: just now, in 2022, I have received an InDesign file where footnotes are still formatted by hand, in frames created for that purpose!

I still hit the space bar twice between sentences.  Regardless of how much technology advances, some of us are still stuck in our habits, while others may refuse to recognize that what they are doing actually *IS* broken and therefore don't think they need to fix it.

[Ramon56]

8 hours ago, Pedrober said:

Unbelievable but true: just now, in 2022, I have received an InDesign file where footnotes are still formatted by hand, in frames created for that purpose!

You mean, exactly like all of us in Affinity? 😏

[Pedrober]

You read my mind!

[cfn]

Request for footnotes / endnotes

I have tried to read through this topic but it's way too big and I don 't seem to have found a solution here.
My request would just be that Affinity Publisher would allow for automatically renumbering note references when one adds, move, or deletes them.
This is a very much needed feature, as sometimes I might have almost 200 endnotes to put in a document that might change afterwards, and this is the only thing that is missing in this software to make it fully usable for me and a 5/5 stars IMO.

[Pedrober]

I think it's perfectly possible if you create a Text Style with autonumbering for your note references.

[Wolfgang P]

I am new here. I have been using AFpublisher for a long time, mostly plain text. Now I want to do some text that is more academic and that needs foot- and end notes. What a surprise: Nothing of that here!

43 pages of posts to this topic don't really help.

 

Question to Serif: Will we have footnotes in AFpublisher and if so, what is the schedule?

[walt.farrell]

27 minutes ago, Wolfgang P said:

Question to Serif: Will we have footnotes in AFpublisher and if so, what is the schedule?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Sorry, but Serif does not answer questions like that, so you are unlikely to get a response from them.

28 minutes ago, Wolfgang P said:

43 pages of posts to this topic don't really help.

This is in the Feedback section of the forums, where we make requests for functional changes to the applications. As you can tell from the length of this thread, many users want the function, and Serif knows that. However, this part of the forums is not where users would share techniques (workarounds) for the lack of functions.

If you want help producing Footnotes and Endnotes with the current version of the application, you should post in the Questions part of forum, and  Users who have managed to find workarounds will probably share their techniques.

[fde101]

Serif has clearly answered earlier in this thread that this is being actively worked on but it simply is not ready yet.

[Alex White]

If there were in the process of working on it in May 2020 (2 years ago!) I wonder if that means that it will be a 2.0 feature rather than a 1.x feature.

[Ramon56]

Alex, it took me LESS than a quarter of that time to design the operating system for one of the Eurofighter computers, and THAT was safety critical!

What I don't understand is why Serif is not providing even a basic footnote/endnote capability and later extend to the more sophisticated features.

[graphandwriting]

5 minutes ago, Ramon56 said:

Alex, it took me LESS than a quarter of that time to design the operating system for one of the Eurofighter computers, ...

Are they still using it?

Sorry, Ramon, but I could not resist this one.

[Ramon56]

2 hours ago, graphandwriting said:

Are they still using it?

Sorry, Ramon, but I could not resist this one.

YES.

And it works - one of the things it controls is the ejection seat, and when the DA6 prototype crashed, it worked like a breeze, saving two lives.

 

[carl123]

6 hours ago, Ramon56 said:

What I don't understand is why Serif is not providing even a basic footnote/endnote capability and later extend to the more sophisticated features

 

4 hours ago, Ramon56 said:

one of the things it controls is the ejection seat, and when the DA6 prototype crashed, it worked like a breeze, saving two lives

Say what?

The DA6 crashed because both engines shut down !!!

I don't think Serif adding a "basic footnote/endnote capability" that crashes all the time is going to go down well with its users

If/when they release it hopefully it will be more stable than the DA6. Publisher does not have ejection seats