docx conversion and footnotes

[m4mmon]

Hello,

I am trying calibre docx input plugin and have been really impressed.
But there is one thing that really annoys me, the footnotes processing: when converting to epub, a separate section is created for each footnote. While doing that increases readability, I have a document with hundreds of footnotes... and I would really appreciate if they could be in the same section.

• I first tried to convert footnotes to endnotes, but the result is the same,
• I checked the footnotes/endnotes paragraph style, option "page break before" is not selected,
• I have looked in calibre conversion panel and have not been able to find any way to control that.

Does anyone have a solution? May be something to do in the source document? Or some magic xpath?

I know that I can merge epub sections with other tools, but I am asking if it is possible to do it *directly* in the document or *while* converting the document with calibre, or if I have to request an enhancement.

Thank you!

[kovidgoyal]

Short answer: You cannot.

Long answer:
Putting footnotes together means you often end up reading the next footnote accidentally, which is distracting and can be bad if it reveals something the reader should not yet know. These are ebooks, it doesn't how many pages they have, you aren't saving anything by reducing the page count.

[m4mmon]

Hi Kovid,
Thank you for your quick answer, you are right for most cases, but in my particular situation, I think this is not completely true: I am working with history books that contain hundred of references (other books, citations, etc.).
I did a short test, and not with the book that have the most footnotes:

• docx converted to epub: 1318 KB, 1298 sections, 7 s to load in calibre viewer,
• the same epub, with notes sections merged: 683 KB, 56 sections, 2 s.

I do not think I am not saving anything by reducing the page count
Since I cannot do that directly and this is very particular, I will merge sections manually after conversion.

[kovidgoyal]

Just use the conversion option to not split on page breaks, that will fix your size issues (under EPUB output in the conversion dialog).

[m4mmon]

Thank you! that worked, should have figured out this one myself

[LeighC]

Hello Kovid

I've only just joined mobileread, so have only just seen this thread.

I have the some query/objection as m4mmon, only my concern is not file sizes, but rather that when I click on an endnote I like to see the list of all later endnotes, so I can note the ones I will want to click on when I get to that point in the text, rather than clicking on every one and finding that most of them don't tell me anything important.

So in that sense I disagree with your long answer at 11.34am on 15 Aug 2013. But if I've understood your short answer in the same post, there's nothing I can do about it. Is that right? I found that doing what you suggested in your post at 1.08pm on the same day didn't put the endnotes into one long list; each endnote was still on its own page. It may have reduced the file size - I didn't check that. But it didn't take out the page break before each endnote. That is presumably what your short answer meant.

Finally, I actually want to see the list of endnotes on a Kindle DX, so I need that to happen in a MOBI file. Should I assume that there is no way of achieving this in a MOBI file?

This is arguably the downside of using an e-book reader: on my original Word file the endnotes were in fact footnotes, so (a) you can read them at the same time as you read the text, (b) there is no need to click on the footnote then click to go back to the text, and (c) you can see at a glance whether you want to read each footnote or not. I appreciate that on an EPUB or MOBI file footnotes have to become endnotes, but the nearest way (IMO) for the endnotes to to be used as if they were footnotes is to see the list of future endnotes when reading the endnote whose number you have just clicked on. Perhaps you would disagree!

Thanks in advance for your help. I hope you see this post!

[eschwartz]

If you can keep track of all the footnotes and what they are about and which ones are important, maybe you don't actually need to return to them, since apparent;y you know them all already?

I would suggest manually editing the resultant ebook to remove pagebreaks. I do not see calibre changing to no longer generate pagebreaks -- it was a deliberate feature.

Your footnotes should be listed in the end, where all the footnotes are kept. That is kind of the idea, they need to be somewhere or you wouldn't have any. But they will not be on the same page unless you remove the pagebreaks.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

...it was a deliberate feature.

I assume having the blue bars button as a permanent fixture of the search bar was also a deliberate feature - but that was changed.

Maybe removing the page breaks between notes is something that could be incorporated into the Modify PI - like removing the cover, non dc metadata etc.

Also not all books are read linearly - reference books are often full of footnotes, end notes, references etc. The need to read/not read notes, references etc will vary depending on the context in which the book is being read.

I've never seen a printed book that put each note on a separate page to 'discourage' readers from reading ahead.

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I've never seen a printed book that put each note on a separate page to 'discourage' readers from reading ahead.

BR

I've never seen the printed book that can put each note on a separate page without requiring a separate piece of paper for each.