Don Doernberg
My feedback
2 results found
-
49 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Don Doernberg
supported this idea
·
-
1 voteDon Doernberg
shared this idea
·
I think there may be an easier way to accomplish what Joerg has in mind. The documents I write in Word and then place into InDesign have two types of footnotes. One type I think of as "author footnotes." Those are footnotes that I write. InDesign numbers those in sequence. But I often include quotations from judicial opinions that have what I think of as "court footnotes," and those should retain the footnote number that the court gave them rather than being renumbered automatically by InDesign.
I think there is a straightforward way to accomplish this. InDesign's current footnote style includes a counter. The counter begins at 1. Each time the user adds a footnote, the counter increments by 1, so InDesign knows what number to give the next footnote. (If the user deletes a footnote, the counter decrements by 1.) And that's great, as far as it goes. Of course, if I add a "court footnote," the counter also increments by 1, and that messes things up. For example, I have a file with "author's notes 1, 2, 3, and 4 at the beginning. Then it has a court footnote that the court has numbered "2." The court footnote should get the number "2" in the InDesign file, but InDesign's automatic footnote numbering will give it "5." If I add a footnote of my own later, InDesign will number it "6," but really it is only author's footnote 5. So ideally, the sequence of notes I have described should look like 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 5. InDesign cannot now do that.
If you created a second footnote style, it would add the flexibility that InDesign now lacks. The second footnote style should differ from the existing one in two ways: (1) If the user selects the new footnote style, InDesign should ask the user what number (or other designation, such as an asterisk) the new footnote should have. (2) Adding the footnote this way should not affect the counter on InDesign's existing footnote style.
That's all there is to it. author's footnotes would continue to get sequential numbers from InDesign's existing footnote style. Court (or other footnotes from quoted material) would get special numbers that the user assigns. Then InDesign would have no difficulty with a footnote order like the one above: 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 5.
This is not an original idea with me. Microsoft Word has exactly this feature already, although I don't know how Microsoft had coded it. Now I am no admirer of Microsoft; over the years its programs have become less and less user friendly, which finally drove me to learn and primarily use Linux. But publishers want documents in Word format.
If Adobe decides to do this, I think it would be cheap and easy. You can take most of the coding for the existing footnote type (placement at the bottom of the page, indents, etc.) and use it for the new footnote style, simply omitting the counter and asking the user to designate the symbol for the new note. InDesign's existing footnote style, when the user invokes it, would continue to number the author's footnotes sequentially, as it should.
InDesign already has multiple paragraph and character styles. Why not multiple footnote styles?