Somebody might want to have footnotes and endnotes in separate lists. Because they are simply two different things, two different tools (they are presented separately in the source document...). Footnotes and endnotes are often written for different purposes, and by different authors.
Somebody might also want to read the endnotes separately, one after the other... And that doesn't work very well when they are mixed with footnotes.
Yes, notes are exported to a separate page by Calibre, by default. This separation is not what I am talking about. (By the way, this default behavior of the conversion can be changed by setting --docx-no-pagebreaks-between-notes, in which case the notes are placed on one page. Such an output is much more readable.)
By "separation" I meant separating footnotes from endnotes. Into two separate lists. The actual output of the conversion is one list, including both footnotes and endnotes. Example:
Notes:
Footnote 1
Endnote 1
Footnote 2
Endnote 2
The change I'm talking about is splitting footnotes and endnotes into two separate lists:
Footnotes:
Footnote 1
Footnote 2
Endnotes:
Endnote 1
Endnote 2
And as for numbering: When you're reading a document with notes, you might want to know what kind of note you're seeing. Before you click on a link. This requires footnotes to be numbered differently from endnotes.
And yes, the type of note could perhaps be distinguished just by its text. I don't know exactly how - for example, you could start each endnote with "ENDNOTE {number}: ...". Or use a different format... Or something. That wouldn't be the usual way to distinguish between footnotes and endnotes. But then you'd have to open each note to find out what kind it is. (Besides, you can easily make such an adjustment only in the source document. However, you can't always work with the source document. Sometimes only the result of the conversion is available...)
In a paper book, footnotes and endnotes are commonly distinguished in two ways: 1/ by location (but this difference is not usually transferred to the ebook), and 2/ by the numbering method. Since the difference in numbering is the only remaining way of distinction, it should be used.
Sometimes people make additional adjustments to the output of conversions just to distinguish between footnotes and endnotes. It's quite complicated, because the difference between the types of notes is consistently removed by the conversion... Therefore, at least a possible hidden distinction of the type of notes in html would be somewhat useful, too. For example current note reference markup can appear as:
Code:
<a id="back_note_1" href="index_split_001.html#note_1" title="1" class="noteref" role="doc-noteref">1</a>
The difference could appear in the value of id, or style, or rel: where "footnote" (or "endnote") would be given instead of "note"... I don't know if such solution would mean any simplification for you.
Well. Footnotes are different thing than endnotes, so they should be treated differently.