Footnotes in HTML3: questions/proposals

Keith Rogers (kerog@sp.isl.secom.co.jp)
Tue, 27 Jun 1995 15:45:46 +0900


I was just looking at the section on footnotes in the HTML3
spec. Is the idea here that footnotes will be activated in
much the same way as balloon help on the Macintosh?

It would seem to me that there should be a separate window
pane at the bottom of the screen for footnotes, more like
the way Word Perfect does help. Passing the mouse over
the footnote would cause it to be displayed at the bottom
of the screen without distracting the reader by popping
up a new window or modifying the information being read
in any way.

It also occurs to me that a common use for footnotes of this
sort might be to expand acronyms or provide definitions of
technical terms. In such a usage pattern a term might appear
a number of times in a document. As it would be laborious
to mark the footnote at each reference to the term, perhaps
a definition at top or bottom of the document would be in
order. Then each instance of the defined term would automatically
be footnoted during display.

What do people think?

-Keith
-------
Keith Rogers kerog@sp.isl.secom.co.jp
SECOM Intelligent Sytems Laboratory, Speech Processing Group

GEd--Hs+:g+p?++!aua-w+v+C++(++++)U+P+L3-N++E---
K+++W---M++V-- -po+Yt++@!5jxRG++('''')tv--b+++
DB---e+++>++++u+(*)h-f+r++n---y+

For an explanation of the above, see
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox/geek-code-2.html