Metanorma: Aequitate Verum

Footnotes

General

Footnotes are useful for adding remarks to content without distracting from the reading flow.

Metanorma AsciiDoc supports:

  • inline footnotes

  • multi-paragraph footnotes

Note
Typical AsciiDoc does not support multi-paragraph footnotes.

Inline footnotes

Footnotes are added to a document using the footnote command (footnote:[]).

The syntax is demonstrated as:

Oryza sativafootnote:[Sativa means "cultivated"], is rice that is farmed commercially.

Multi-paragraph footnotes

The multi-paragraph footnote command footnoteblock:[id] allows for specification of multi-paragraph content within a footnote, through a named note block. [added in https://github.com/metanorma/metanorma-standoc/releases/tag/v1.6.4].

The id is the identifier of a note containing the contents of the footnote.

The following syntax is used:

... footnoteblock:[my-anchor] ... (1)

...
[[my-anchor]] (2)
[NOTE] (3)
--
Multi-paragraph footnote content.
--
  1. my-anchor indicates where the footnote’s text block is located.

  2. Anchor of the multi-paragraph NOTE block.

  3. Defined NOTE block that provides content for the footnote.

Example 1. Example of a multi-paragraph footnote
This is a paragraph.footnoteblock:[id1] This continues the paragraph.

[[id]]
[NOTE]
--
This is

a multi-paragraph

footnote
--
Note
Multi-paragraph footnotes are a Metanorma AsciiDoc feature and not supported in typical AsciiDoc.

Named footnotes and duplicate footnotes

In some cases, identical footnote content can apply to multiple places. Metanorma AsciiDoc supports named footnotes that facilitate reuse without repeated definitions.

By default, Metanorma already detects whether footnote text is reused. When the text of a footnote is repeated in two different places, the same footnote number in both places, rather than treat the repetition as a new footnote. Assignment of IDs is therefore optional.

Note
Duplicated footnote reuse applies to HTML and DOC outputs.

The following syntax is used:

... footnote:{id}[text] ... (1)

... footnote:{id}[] ... (2)
  1. Definition of a named footnote. {id} is an assigned unique ID for the footnote, and text the footnote content

  2. To reuse a named footnote, specify the ID but keep the text portion empty.

Example 2. Example of a named footnote and its reuse
A bold statement!footnote:disclaimer[Opinions are my own.]

Another outrageous statement.footnote:disclaimer[]

Special footnotes

Table footnotes

Footnotes immediately placed after a table are considered a "table footnote", which renders the footnote at the table footer, within the table.

Table footnotes are numbered separately from normal footnotes.

Figure footnotes

Footnotes immediately placed after a figure are considered a "figure footnote", which renders the footnote at the bottom of the figure.

Figure footnotes are numbered separately from normal footnotes.

Document title footnotes

Footnotes on document titles are recognised [added in https://github.com/metanorma/metanorma-standoc/releases/tag/v1.6.1], but by default they are not rendered, because of how document title pages are processed separately in Metanorma via Liquid templates.

Document title footnotes are moved into /bibdata/note[@type = "title-footnote"], and are treated as document metadata, as are document titles themselves. The location of the footnote within the title is not preserved.