Don Doernberg
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An error occurred while saving the comment Don Doernberg
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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?
Don Doernberg
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Footnote numbering and quotations
ID's automatic footnote numbering is great . . . except when it isn't. If the user is quoting material and the quoted material itself has footnotes, those footnotes should retain the numbers from the quotation.
We all know how ID does footnote numbers. There is a footnote counter, and when the user adds a footnote, the counter increments by one; if the user eliminates a footnote, the counter decrements. When either of these happens, ID also renumbers the footnotes following the change appropriately.
So far, so good, until the user includes a quotation that has a footnote. Then ID assigns the in-quotation footnote the next sequential footnote number, increments the counter, and changes the numbers of succeeding footnotes. That's not so good.
There is a fix that Adobe could include. Create a way to add a "special" footnote, special in this way: the user has to supply a footnote number (or other designation), and adding the special footnote does *not* increment the counter. In programming terms, this is not a hard fix. I am no fan of Microsoft generally, but even it was able to figure this out and include it as a feature in Word.
With ID's current system, as soon as an in-quotation comes into the document, the user has to change all subsequent footnote numbers by hand. It can be done, but it entails making the automatically assigned number invisible and inserting the new number before it. (You can't delete the automatically assigned number, because then the footnote disappears.) The footnote itself (not the footnote call) will have the automatically assigned number, but the user can substitute the proper number without damaging the footnote reference. It is, shall we say, a bit cumbersome.
Simple problem, easy fix, much more usable ID.