Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
One important issue about footnotes: at present neither CSS3 nor XSL-FO explicitly support reflowing footnotes onto the next page. The common scenario in which there's a footnote on the 5th line from the bottom pointing to a note that's longer than 4 lines (for example) will break unless the RS is smart enough to realise that it needs to create a new footnote on the next page with the left-over lines. This needs to be mandated in the specification to make sure implementers don't mess it up. Using a pop-up windows instead would negate the problem (and is something I'd find preferable).
|
It does not need to be a pop-up if it lets you page/scroll the footnote area independently. In your scenario, the page would contain maybe 20 lines of main text and 4 lines of footnote; you could get the next page of the main text, dismissing the whole footnote, or page only the footnote, and you get the same 20 lines of main text, but the next 4 lines of the (long) footnote.
Things could get funny with footnotes inside footnotes inside footnotes, though.
Another related thing that could be worth considering is having some element that remains static while the rest of the book changes when paging, a bit like a header, but not for headers. For instance, a map or a diagram. In printed books you often have to turn the pages back and forth when your read a text that refers to a picture in another page (and it's sometimes inevitable, if the text that refers to it is more than one page long). Wouldn't it be nice if you had the possibility of saying "during this whole passage, keep this image fixed on screen while scrolling/paging the text".