Pop-up notes for iPad

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Thanks for the model html for footnotes, Hitch. This has been the one thing I still relied on Word to do for me.

Anytime, NJ.

Hitch

[Faterson]

I'm reopening this thread because (cats and dogs notwithstanding) it is by far the most useful discussion I have encountered on the Internet after extensively exploring the topic of popup footnotes.

I'm currently reading a scholarly book with lots of footnotes in it, and I find it interesting that while this book does not display any popup footnotes in my primary e-reader, which is Marvin for iOS, nor do any footnotes from this book get displayed as popups in iBooks or Kindle or Kobo on iPad... they do get displayed as popup footnotes in Moon+ Reader Pro on Android. Moon must be doing it "intuitively/heuristically", as discussed previously in this thread, because there's nothing special in the coding to generate the popups – none of the stuff Elizabeth Castro talks about in her blog entry on popup footnotes. Just simple back-and-forth links of the variety Hitch quoted in this thread.

In fact, Moon+ Reader Pro seems to be giving you the best of both worlds: it first pops up a footnote, but it also gives you the option to subsequently press the "Open" button, and then you get transferred to the book's endnotes section where it may be more comfortable to read some of the more extensive footnotes. See the 2 screenshots from Moon, attached below.

I can understand both of what Psymon and Hitch are saying on page 1 of this thread. They both have a point, even though they claim the opposite. On the one hand, as Hitch says, it may be more comfortable to read longish footnotes in an endnotes section, without the need for scrolling in a pop-up window. On the other hand, as Psymon says, in texts with a huge amount of footnotes (say, a couple of footnotes in every sentence of the text, as in that particular Walden edition by Thoreau that Psymon coded for the web), popup footnotes are not just about "looking cool", but they're infinitely more usable. Sorry, Hitch, but in cases like that, it's just not true that "a tap is a tap, and you need 2 taps in both instances". Yes, but as the screenshot from Moon+ Reader Pro documents, with a popup footnote (or at least with some of them), you might still be able to see the snippet of text to which the footnote is directly attached, at a single glance – and that makes all the difference, from the point of view of usability and user-friendliness. It's the difference analogous between working on a desktop computer with a single monitor attached to it, and on a computer with 2 (or more) monitors attached. Or it's a difference analogous to seeing two application windows at the same time (some Android devices lately), versus having to run each app in full-screen all the time (iOS). Sometimes, it can be invaluable to be able to see two related things at a single glance. Sorry, but for Psymon's particular edition of Thoreau's Walden, I can't imagine any reader would be delighted at being forced to jump back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between the main text and the endnotes section all the time. For a text like this, popup footnotes really seem ideally suited functionally speaking, and it's not primarily about "looking cool".

<aside>I'm a big-time Emerson, Thoreau et al. fan; in fact, the -erson in my "Faterson" nickname is a bow to Emerson, while Fat- is a reference to my no. 1 favorite writer, Leo Tolstoy (and his last name means "Fat" in Russian), who happened to be a big-time Emerson and Thoreau fan, too.</aside>

Personally, I find it distracting to have to be switching back and forth between the main text and the endnotes section all the time – even in books that don't feature an enormous amount of footnotes like that Walden edition does. So, I find Moon's "intuitive/heuristic" treatment of footnotes to be the ideal remedy. What's my solution on the iPad, though, where Marvin is my e-reader of choice? Well, I have three instances of Marvin installed on my iPad: the standard, universal Marvin for iOS, then the no-longer-developed Marvin for iPad, and Marvin Free as well. Whenever a book has lots of footnotes, I load it into both full-fledged Marvin instances. I read the book's main text in the standard Marvin for iOS, while I keep the endnotes section of that book permanently open in Marvin for iPad. Then, to read footnotes, I keep switching back and forth between the two Marvins, using iOS's 4-finger sideways swipe gesture. If that sounds crazy, believe me: I find it less annoying or time-consuming than having to tap on footnote marks all the time, and then having to tap again every time to return to main text. Just swiping with 4 fingers in one direction, and then swiping once more in the opposite direction, seems so much faster and easier, because you don't need to keep aiming with your finger, in order to hit the (typically smallish) footnote marks precisely. I even set up two different font colours in the 2 Marvins, so that the main book text displays in one color, and the footnotes to that same book in a different color, which makes it easy for me at any time to tell which Marvin I'm currently looking at.

I would still prefer if Marvin displayed footnotes in popup windows, though. Upcoming functionality like that in Marvin has already been announced, but I'm afraid it would require special EPUB 3-like coding of the type Elizabeth Castro wrote about. I've just opened a thread in Marvin's GitHub for this issue.

Another potential solution for this would be split window, but I know of no e-reader app per se that offers this feature. (It definitely is possible technically: see the excellent Olive Tree Bible app for iPad that allows you to open and simultaneously display 2 Biblical editions in a split window, so that you can, for example, view the same text passage in 2 different Bible translations at a single glance, and when you scroll in one portion of the split screen, the other portion of the split screen scrolls along correspondingly.) I have suggested this functionality to Marvin's developer, with no result so far. With a split-screen, for example in portrait orientation, a user might perhaps (by adjusting a slider) devote the top two thirds of the screen to the book's main text, and the bottom third of the screen to displaying the footnotes section. That is, the split-screen should be capable of simultaneously displaying two different sections from the same EPUB file. The top portion of the screen might be permanently displaying the book text, and the bottom portion of the screen might be permanently displaying the footnotes section. Both portions of the screen would be individually scrollable. (It would perhaps be too much, too futuristic to ask the footnotes section to scroll automatically depending on what footnote marks are visible in the top portion of the screen in the book's main text – but it might be doable.) Split-screen functionality like this would nicely emulate the look of a printed book: after all, in a printed book, you get to see the book's main text in the top portion of the printed page, and footnotes (as their name suggests) at the bottom.

Yet another option (that would be the fourth footnotes option, right?) would be to display footnotes in the same way that e-ink Kindles have always, and highly ingeniously, displayed dictionary definitions: you tap a word, and its definition pops up at the bottom (or top) of the Kindle's screen. In the same way, you might tap a footnote mark, and the footnote would temporarily pop up at (you guessed it:) the foot of the page. No need for a popup bubble/window, and no need to keep switching between the main text and the footnotes section, either. If you ask me, this might be the best of all solutions: because unlike with a popup bubble that often ends up obstructing the (full) view of the passage to which the footnote is attached, you'd get to see the context of the footnote, and the footnote itself, at a single glance, every time.

To sum up: there appear – in theory – to be 4 possible ways of displaying footnotes in e-books. Only option #1 currently works reliably, but is rather unwieldy; option #2 is not widely supported as of late 2014; and options #3 and #4 don't seem to be available in current e-readers:

1. put footnotes in an endnotes section (either at the end of the book, or at the end of each chapter)
2. display footnote in a popup bubble/window
3. display footnotes using a split-screen, giving the user the flexible option to adjust the dimensions of the two sub-windows with a slider
4. display the footnote at the bottom (or top) of the screen whenever the corresponding footnote mark is tapped in the main text.

What would the ideal, supremely intelligent e-reader app do? Why, of course: it would support all 4 of the footnote display options listed above, leaving it up to the user to choose whether he or she prefers to view footnotes using method #1, #2, #3, or #4. Don't force the same way of displaying footnotes on everyone. Each of us is different. In fact, I as a single reader might prefer a different way of displaying footnotes from book A to book B to book C, or even inside a particular book. For a heavily annotated book, like Psymon's edition of Walden, I might prefer method #3: see the footnotes section displayed permanently at the bottom of the screen. For a different book with fewer, but still many footnotes, I might prefer option #4: pop up the footnote at the bottom of the screen whenever I tap a footnote mark. And for a book with very few footnotes, I might find the option traditionally used nowadays, #1, perfectly satisfactory. An intelligent e-reader app should be flexible enough to let me change my preferrred way of displaying footnotes on the fly, from #1 to #4 to #3 or vice versa – whatever the reader might find appropriate for any particular book, or even a particular section of a book. (Some chapters of a single book might be heavily annotated, and others might not. Or I might be interested in exploring footnotes related to certain chapters of a book, while choosing to ignore footnotes related to other chapters of the same book if those chapters aren't as relevant for my needs.)

As to the footnote marks controversy, that is: using superscript versus using square brackets, I have had bad experience with superscript. Using plain superscripts often results in unequal line heights throughout the book text, which makes the book look ugly. (Moon+ Reader is guilty of this, too, as can be seen in the screenshot below.) If you attempt to fiddle with the superscript via CSS properties (the vertical-align, etc., tricks that Psymon provided)... well, the effect might still not be what you intended to see, especially on simple e-ink e-reader devices including the plain black-and-white Kindles.

I would, therefore, decidedly prefer to use footnote marks of the [23] variety instead, no superscript. I'm going to ask my client as to what type of footnote marks he prefers. If the client insists on superscripted footnote marks despite the dangers of doing so that I'll have explained to him... well, it's going to be the client's choice, then, and not mine, and the client would bear responsibility for any undesired consequences that design choice might entail.

Finally, a cautionary note on Psymon's dismissal of potential issues related to having to load and reload a large endnotes file all the time, when repeatedly moving from main text to endnotes and back. Please don't underestimate this, Psymon. This is definitely a potential issue not just on low-powered, old reading devices, but there's a noticeable delay in loading a huge separate new file inside an EPUB (even if it contains nothing but 100% pure text!) even if you're reading on a recent iPad using a superb EPUB e-reader like Marvin. I would strongly discourage anyone from putting 1000+ footnotes into a single endnotes file – dividing that endnotes file into several endnotes files (one endnotes file per each book chapter, for example) might be the way to go. For me, though, the alternative option discussed earlier seems preferable: just put the footnotes directly at the end of the same internal EPUB file that contains the chapter of the book text to which these particular footnotes relate. That has the huge advantage of never having to load a new file when moving between main text and footnotes/endnotes; and as I said, this is definitely a relevant consideration even on powerful computers like the iPad tablets. So as not to disrupt the flow of reading the main text, the solution is easy: simply put a tappable "Continue to Chapter X" hyperlink just above the start of the endnotes section at the end of each chapter (each internal EPUB file).

So, my current dilemma is whether to bother, in the e-book I am currently producing, with popup footnotes-specific coding Elizabeth Castro mentioned, or whether I should just stick to traditional coding that Hitch recommended. Based on the discussion in this thread (and I don't believe much has changed since the summer), it appears that in late 2014, employing popup footnotes-specific coding is just not worth the bother, because the popup footnotes functionality still isn't as widely and universally supported as we'd like to see. Please correct me if the conclusion I have reached here is wrong. Thank you.

[odedta]

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I'm reopening this thread because (cats and dogs notwithstanding) it is by far the most useful discussion I have encountered on the Internet after extensively exploring the topic of popup footnotes.

Thank you for this post (MY KIND OF POST!). Extremely well-thought, and even gave me a lot to think about.

I might have to commandeer some of your thoughts on displaying footnotes.

Originally Posted by Faterson

So, my current dilemma is whether to bother, in the e-book I am currently producing, with popup footnotes-specific coding Elizabeth Castro mentioned, or whether I should just stick to traditional coding that Hitch recommended.

I personally believe that it is better to make the code as "broad", and work across as many readers as possible.

Once you get into the realm of creating SPECIFIC code for a SPECIFIC reader. You start multiplying the amount of work you have to do per book, while raising the chance in the future of breaking (on either newer hardware, or newer software versions).

Hours of work to create a version specifically for iBooks, hours for specific Amazon/KF8 code, hours for specific B&N code, etc. etc.

Then, what happens in the future when your SPECIFIC code breaks? (For example, iBooks is notorious for making things incompatible in future versions, and quickly abandoning pushing the latest software updates to older hardware). Code that works on the newest version of iBooks, might not work on the older version of iBooks, and there is no way in Apple's ecosystem to specify "this book needs AT LEAST iBooks #.#".

Side Note: This is also a reason why you should typically avoid trying to do some "hackish" fixes, to get around bugs. Some "hackish" code that worked on an older version of iBooks might not work on a newer version.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

I might have to commandeer some of your thoughts on displaying footnotes.

You're welcome to do so. I especially wish e-book software creators (such as Kris of Marvin for iOS) would "commandeer" those ideas, that is: implement them in their e-reader software.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

I personally believe that it is better to make the code as "broad", and work across as many readers as possible.

I agree. I've basically already decided to go the route #1, that is: the standard, "old-fashioned" way of putting all footnotes into an endnotes section, then linking back and forth from/to the main text using standard HTML links similar to those recommended by Hitch in this thread. However, I'll be putting the endnotes section at the end of every chapter (every internal EPUB file), instead of a gigantic, all-encompassing endnotes section at the end of the book. And, I'm going to use regular-sized numbers in square brackets, instead of supercript numbers, for footnote marks. (And I thank you for making that suggestion on page 2 of this thread.)

I'd love to implement the "nicer" footnote display methods #2, #3, or #4 instead... but, unfortunately, it appears that as of November 2014, it's too early to have such "lofty" ambitions. I posted to this thread today to make sure I wasn't overlooking some recent and universal positive trend in this regard, but it appears that I was not.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Once you get into the realm of creating SPECIFIC code for a SPECIFIC reader. You start multiplying the amount of work you have to do per book

Well, as long as my client paid me my standard rate for that excessive work performed, I wouldn't really mind... However, it would be dishonest from me to deliver a product to my client that I'd be well aware was not "future-proof", and that might prove worthless only a few years later, which would have ultimately wasted the client's money. I will, therefore, very likely be delivering footnotes done in "old-fashioned, unsophisticated" method #1 to my client for the book I'm currently working on, and I trust they're going to accept that as the "best" (or "safest", if you will) – even if not optimal – solution as of November 2014.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Faterson

You're welcome to do so. I especially wish e-book software creators (such as Kris of Marvin for iOS) would "commandeer" those ideas, that is: implement them in their e-reader software.

[...]

I'd love to implement the "nicer" footnote display methods #2, #3, or #4 instead... but, unfortunately, it appears that as of November 2014, it's too early to have such "lofty" ambitions.

Heh, yep, having an option of all four really would be great. But this stuff really should be taken care of at the "device/reader" level or the entire "standards" level, and not at the "book" level (with every book doing its own "hackish" javascript, etc. etc.).

Currently, the best method for EPUB/MOBIs is heuristics at the reader level. Go point Kris over here, and maybe he might implement it. Perhaps that might start an avalanche of footnote advancement!

I think the only hope is for the next ebook format AFTER EPUB, and hope that THAT format will have some better standards for coding/handling footnotes.

Side Note: I must admit, I haven't read TOO much into HTML5 asides, and EPUB3's implementation of footnotes. I just gathered some info over the many months. I must admit, I haven't dug into the nitty gritty, and seen how things like AZARDI/Readium/iBooks actually handles it.

I think LaTeX handles it pretty well:

This is some a normal sentence with a footnote.\footnote{This is a little footnote.}

This is another sentence.\footnote{This is a really really long footnote.

With multiple paragraphs.

And more paragraphs.

And even more paragraphs.

And one more for good measure.}

Then it is up to the LaTeX renderer/classes you use. You can easily then specify what sort of output you want (footnotes at the bottom of the page, end notes at the end of a chapter, an entire chapter dedicated to end notes, footnotes at the end of every section, ...).

The numbering of the footnote can be taken care of automatically. You can also go in and easily specify what numbering scheme you want to follow: letters, numbers, roman numerals, symbols, or your own custom numbering scheme (perhaps you want "##.", or "[##]" or "(##)"). You can also then specify whether you want the numbers to reset per chapter, reset per page, or go from 1 -> the end of the book.

I don't see why something more powerful like a tablet wouldn't be able to handle this sort of thing, but I could definitely see how a system THAT complex could bog down a much weaker machine (or one with very little RAM).

Side Note: Also, you would need to come up with some standard way to cross-reference a given footnote. For example, in the book, the text might say "see Footnote 30 on page 15". If everything is auto-numbered, that might get a little hairy. Most non-fiction books have a very large amount of cross-references. And not just with footnotes, but figures, formulas, images, ...

Other Side Note: This also brings up, multiple sets of footnotes, which is quite a complex problem. What if you have one set of "numbered" footnotes, one set of "alphabet" footnotes, one set of "roman numeral" footnotes. I always point to this thread as a "horror show" for footnotes (see Post #19):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=225045

It had a 3 distinct sets of footnotes (Original Footnotes, Translator's Footnotes, American Editor's Footnotes), footnotes in footnotes, and MASSIVE footnotes (one book had a footnote 7 pages long).

AAAAnd One More Side Note: A lot of this auto-number generation also has to balance looks/usability with speed. In order to generate all the numbers on-the-fly (or when the book is initially opened), you would need to load the entire chapter/book into memory, and calculate everything. This might make the book take much longer to open/turn/layout. Users/Readers might not like that at all, they want to read NOW NOW NOW.

Similar to MathML heavy books. I don't have any MathML EPUBs on hand, BUT, here is an HTML+MathJAX version of "The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I":

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.e...1.html#Ch11-S4

While my PC was able to open the site fine, when I opened it on my phone, things went chugging badly while it was generating/calculating/laying everything out. Then even simple scrolling made my phone jerk around... and it was not a happy experience.

Originally Posted by Faterson

[...] However, I'll be putting the endnotes section at the end of every chapter (every internal EPUB file), instead of a gigantic, all-encompassing endnotes section at the end of the book. And, I'm going to use regular-sized numbers in square brackets, instead of supercript numbers, for footnote marks. (And I thank you for making that suggestion on page 2 of this thread.)

Definitely the right decision. Still have to keep in mind all those old/slow devices (and old/slow readers with poor eyesight) out there.

Originally Posted by Faterson

However, it would be dishonest from me to deliver a product to my client that I'd be well aware was not "future-proof", and that might prove worthless only a few years later, which would have ultimately wasted the client's money.

Same reasoning to strongly recommend AGAINST much of the "Fixed Format" books. That is even worse than just a simple EPUB2/EPUB3 divide, that is a specific STORE + DEVICE divide!

Heh, and another thing I like to keep in mind, many of the books I create get posted onto a site (let us say you pull a chapter, and post it as a Daily Article). The more "EPUB specific", "javascript heavy", and "hackish" you go with your code, the less portable the code becomes OUTSIDE/BEYOND the EPUB format.

With more and more publishers also putting up "HTML versions" of their books on a site... it is very easy to copy/paste basic HTML over, with the "old fashioned" footnotes, but fancy HTML5 + javascript? No (or very small) chance.

Originally Posted by Faterson

I will, therefore, very likely be delivering footnotes done in "old-fashioned, unsophisticated" method #1 to my client for the book I'm currently working on, and I trust they're going to accept that as the "best" (or "safest", if you will) – even if not optimal – solution as of November 2014.

Yep yep. You can always bash them over the head with logic, and link them to this topic.... and then scare them away forever. Or just send them my way, and I will type up a twenty page report which will make their eyes glaze over.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Faterson

I've basically already decided to go the route #1, that is: the standard, "old-fashioned" way of putting all footnotes into an endnotes section, then linking back and forth from/to the main text using standard HTML links similar to those recommended by Hitch in this thread. However, I'll be putting the endnotes section at the end of every chapter (every internal EPUB file), instead of a gigantic, all-encompassing endnotes section at the end of the book

That's exactly what I ended up doing, too. I'm learning -- however slowly -- that getting "fancy-schmancy" isn't worth all the effort that one puts in for it, and that even if what you end up doing isn't the ideal way of doing things, at least there's a certain level of reassurance that it'll just work.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Other Side Note: This also brings up, multiple sets of footnotes, which is quite a complex problem. What if you have one set of "numbered" footnotes, one set of "alphabet" footnotes, one set of "roman numeral" footnotes. I always point to this thread as a "horror show" for footnotes (see Post #19):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=225045

It had a 3 distinct sets of footnotes (Original Footnotes, Translator's Footnotes, American Editor's Footnotes), footnotes in footnotes, and MASSIVE footnotes (one book had a footnote 7 pages long).

Thank you for the link. That's a great thread on "footnotes in EPUB". If Google was truly smart, it would return that thread as the very first search result. But it does not (perhaps because it's in the "Sigil" sub-forum and does not mention footnotes in the thread title at all). I think Google typically sends everyone to Liz Castro's blog article instead, where she seems to be encouraging everyone to start using "EPUB 3-specific" (that's what it amounts to) coding to generate popup footnotes. As the discussion in the current thread has shown, however, that might not be the best course of action to take, even though over 2 years have now passed since Liz first posted the blog article. Maybe it looked back then as if popup footnotes might soon gain wider acceptance, but not much has changed, really, over the last couple of years.

PS: I'm not sure myself how I ended up finding this thread, but I'm sure glad I found it before starting to fiddle with non-standard coding. All I know is I didn't get here by browsing MobileRead forums normally, but Google sent me in this neighborhood in one way or another. Thanks to Psymon for launching the thread (the keywords in the thread title hit the mark, too).

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Thank you for the link. That's a great thread on "footnotes in EPUB". If Google was truly smart, it would return that thread as the very first search result. But it does not (perhaps because it's in the "Sigil" sub-forum and does not mention footnotes in the thread title at all). I think Google typically sends everyone to Liz Castro's blog article instead, where she seems to be encouraging everyone to start using "EPUB 3-specific" (that's what it amounts to) coding to generate popup footnotes. As the discussion in the current thread has shown, however, that might not be the best course of action to take, even though over 2 years have now passed since Liz first posted the blog article. Maybe it looked back then as if popup footnotes might soon gain wider acceptance, but not much has changed, really, over the last couple of years.

Listen, I like Liz as much as the next guy--and we (my company) supports her blog, but she's exceedingly Apple-centric. Even her formidable tome on ePUB (Straight to the Point) is pretty much all Apple, All the Time. I still recommend it, because to my mind, it's the best "primer" out there for newbs, even some years later (e.g., "what's an OPF?"), but the Google results are, indeed, frustrating. Much of what happens in ePUB is mostly discussed HERE, on MR, to my mind. Of course, I might just think that because this is where I hang my own hat, to relax with my peeps, so to speak.

PS: I'm not sure myself how I ended up finding this thread, but I'm sure glad I found it before starting to fiddle with non-standard coding. All I know is I didn't get here by browsing MobileRead forums normally, but Google sent me in this neighborhood in one way or another. Thanks to Psymon for launching the thread (the keywords in the thread title hit the mark, too).

Good, glad you found it. I've been all around that block on footnotes, trust me. We get a lot of Mac-centric folks in here, who have iPads, and only want "popup footnotes," but, I've had them come BACK, too, when they realized that that market share was pretty tiny. {shrug}. It's not like I didn't warn them--LOUDLY--that what they wanted wouldn't work everywhere.

Folks think that I say "use this basic footnote coding" just because, but that's not it; it's because I've tried the other methods, or struck-out with the other methods, etc. I mean, look at your own self--you looked, analyzed, assessed, and...yup, here you are, back at the basic two-way footnote, relying on the device to do the lifting, if applicable. It's really all that can be done, at this time.

It's a hard road, really. People out there don't think about what it's like to try to make your ducats on something that changes by the day, and by the retailer. I mean, sure, if you're doing fiction books by uploading Word, it's not complex. But if you're trying to do more-complex or better books, coding correctly, trying to make sure that they work on the majority (not even ALL) devices, readers and apps...it's not easy to run a business and stay on top of the "everything is changing" dynamic. To Pop-up or not to pop-up, that is the question....

Hitch

[Faterson]

Producing the current book I'm working on as EPUB 3 (especially as only EPUB 3) makes no sense – EPUB 3 does not have wide enough support for now. So, the new <aside> tags are out of the question for me.

However, I wish we could simply include the other tags Liz Castro talks about, epub:type="noteref" and epub:type="footnote" in our EPUB 2 books and their traditional hyperlinks coding. I know they don't belong in EPUB 2, but they would make every footnote and footnote mark instantly and clearly identifiable, so that no more guessing and heuristics on the part of Moon+ Reader, Kindle Paperwhite et al. would be necessary, and popup footnotes might become reality even in EPUB 2 books.

I'm afraid, though, that it's too early for epub:type="noteref" and epub:type="footnote", too, in terms of general acceptance. Sigh. Liz Castro sounded ecstatic about them back in May 2012, but it doesn't look like they've gained any sort of traction to speak of since then.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Thank you for the link. That's a great thread on "footnotes in EPUB". If Google was truly smart, it would return that thread as the very first search result. But it does not (perhaps because it's in the "Sigil" sub-forum and does not mention footnotes in the thread title at all).

[...]

PS: I'm not sure myself how I ended up finding this thread, but I'm sure glad I found it before starting to fiddle with non-standard coding. All I know is I didn't get here by browsing MobileRead forums normally, but Google sent me in this neighborhood in one way or another. Thanks to Psymon for launching the thread (the keywords in the thread title hit the mark, too).

I really need to stop typing/digitizing so much, and start going back and organizing my older posts, and organizing helpful topics as I run across them. There is so much written here (by me and others), that covers nearly everything under the sun. For those of us who sit here and read every topic, every day, for years, you just slowly absorb all the knowledge.

I do have a few posts now that I point to, which leads to a "pyramid" of helpful links (pointing to other great topics, which leads to more, etc. etc.). But I don't want to flood THIS topic with that as well.

Willus did something similar over here, trying to gather info dedicated towards converting PDF:

http://willus.com/k2pdfopt/pdf_conversion.shtml

Maybe this might be my kick in the butt to finally split off and make my own site/page/blog. :P

Originally Posted by Faterson

I think Google typically sends everyone to Liz Castro's blog article instead, where she seems to be encouraging everyone to start using "EPUB 3-specific" (that's what it amounts to) coding to generate popup footnotes.

BLEH! Typically when I do a lot of EPUB searches, her site shows up, but then MobileRead not too far after... and guess where I then go to learn the ACTUAL info?

Now, I typically just type in "site:mobileread.com" after my searches.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Even her formidable tome on ePUB (Straight to the Point) is pretty much all Apple, All the Time. I still recommend it, because to my mind, it's the best "primer" out there for newbs, even some years later (e.g., "what's an OPF?"), but the Google results are, indeed, frustrating.

BLEHHHH... I highly recommend AGAINST the book. It was maybe 75% InDesign + iBooks, with MAYBE 25% useful info (being generous here). Just WAYYYYY too Adobe/Apple-centric for my tastes.

So you won't see me recommending that book to anyone. I would much rather point them over to topics.... and while a pyramid of links is not as neatly organized, or as "user-friendly" as that book, you would learn a heck of a lot more.

Also, while you might not find a SPECIFIC answer to your problem, you might absorb a lot of side information from all of the side notes/little chats we all have between eachother. (For example, doing footnotes as [##] instead of superscript). This sort of stuff can solve an answer to a question you didn't even know you had!

Side Note: Although perhaps it is my anti-Apple/Adobe bias... I nearly dislike everything under the sun by both companies. Also, it could have been by the time I went to look at that book, I was already doing/creating the EPUBs, so most of the info was not useful to me in the slightest. Also, it could have been me looking for a much more technical-focused book, than her readers are/were, perhaps I am just the wrong demographic.

Originally Posted by Faterson

I'm afraid, though, that it's too early for epub:type="noteref" and epub:type="footnote", too, in terms of general acceptance. Sigh. Liz Castro sounded ecstatic about them back in May 2012, but it doesn't look like they've gained any sort of traction to speak of since then.

Well, similar to a lot of the HTML5 stuff. It sounds great on paper, but in the actual nitty-gritty, you are going to have all the different browsers handling it SLIGHTLY differently (so you are going to have to code browser-specific code), and then you have A TON of people using browsers that don't even handle HTML5 (or only a very small subset). Even recently, my friend implemented some minor rounded corners on his site. There was even a breakage in how the corners were dealt with between Firefox + Chrome.

It will probably be another decade before some of that stuff starts getting adopted by the vast majority of sites. I mean, FINALLY, the death of IE6 is coming!

[Faterson]

Here's my summary of the issue, as of November 2014, that I've just posted to another discussion group where I've been discussing the topic of footnotes in EPUB books:

*****

Thank you everyone for your feedback. Apart from that received in this group, there have been some excellent, eye-opening follow-up posts to my own lengthy MobileRead post exploring the issue, a few of them penned by true EPUB professionals:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...62#post2972962

The consensus is clear: no <aside> tags for now, and (sadly) not even the potentially highly useful epub:type="noteref" and epub:type="footnote" tags for now, either, although these might be – no matter how "non-standard" doing so would be – implemented inside our current EPUB 2 coding without any problems whatsoever. A simple search & replace operation, and you're done – each footnote and footnote mark would be instantly and unambiguously identified, so that popup (and other types of) footnotes could become reality right now, instead of us waiting for some distant future of universal EPUB 3 acceptance.

So, it appears that Liz Castro's joy over the birth of popup footnotes in that blog article from 2 years ago was premature and, to uninitiated readers of her article today, perhaps misleading. (It doesn't help that Ms. Castro is notoriously known to be Adobe-centric and Apple-centric.)

And so, for now, the wisest course of action seems to be to stick to the "low-key"/conservative/cautious/traditionalist, even if slightly unwieldy and unsophisticated, way of presenting footnotes as standard "back-and-forth" hyperlinks between the main text and the footnotes section, laid out as endnotes (ideally at the end of each chapter, rather than the end of the book, especially if there are many of them). Further, it might be wise to avoid superscripts for footnote marks, opting for something like this: [23] (in regular font-size) instead.

[odedta]

I disagree with your conclusion Faterson, HTML5 and CSS3 were rather experimental about 2 years ago, browsers had limited support for it and look what's going on today, nobody I know is using HTML 4.01 any more, everybody is using the new standard.

As for ePub3 and footnotes, I believe that the only proper way to display footnotes in an electronic book is by pop-ups and to that end I support ePub3 and build only ePub3 files.
There are plenty of readers out there that support this format, things tend to get standardized.
I feel like building ePub2 files is not looking towards the future, in addition, the more we create ePub3 and work with it, the more it will drive the community to create ePub3 compliant readers.

[Faterson]

By the way, Psymon, I know exactly how I'd be reading your particular EPUB edition of Walden: because I have several tablets (from various platforms), I'd simply open your book simultaneously on two tablets: say, the book's main text on my 10-inch iPad, and the footnotes/endnotes on iPad mini. That would pretty efficiently simulate the footnote display method #3 described above, that currently is not available in EPUB universe: split screen. For a book like your Walden edition, with a huge amount of footnotes, seeing footnotes displayed permanently might be even more useful than seeing them in popups (as in your webpage edition of the same book). As to moving back-and-forth between the main text and endnotes in your particular book – I'm afraid that would be a massive pain in the behind for all readers, including a Thoreau fan like myself, let alone a casual reader.

Oh, and no matter how ingeniously your webpage edition is crafted (and it is ingenious), I refuse to read literary texts from webpages. This is 2014. I convert any and all literary texts from webpages to EPUB and only read them that way – preferably in Marvin for iOS, but Moon+ Reader on Android is excellent as well. (I can't stand the generic bunch of apps like Kindle, iBooks, Kobo et al., because they're just too dumb functionally, and books look ugly in them.)

Is it possible to download or purchase your EPUB edition of Walden somewhere, if you've already finished working on it? I plan to (re)read Walden one of these days, and doing so in a heavily annotated edition such as yours might be instructive. I might even help you catch a few outstanding typos (if there are any) – a professional disease of mine.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Is it possible to download or purchase your EPUB edition of Walden somewhere, if you've already finished working on it? I plan to (re)read Walden one of these days, and doing so in a heavily annotated edition such as yours might be instructive. I might even help you catch a few outstanding typos (if there are any) – a professional disease of mine.

Oh, I'm most definitely grateful for the interest, but I guess I should mention that basically just gave up on the idea of doing up that particular text. I am working on a nice anthology of Thoreau's writings at the moment, but not the one with all the notes -- there were just "Too many notes!" (to borrow a phrase from Amadeus) and it just seemed very impractical to do it up as an ebook. Maybe some day, if/when popups become more standard, but not right now. :/