How do I repeat a footnote?

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Cinnamon
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How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by Cinnamon »

Hello everyone
I'm developing a customer requirements document where I'm specifiying network speeds, PC specs and so on. I've a footnote that appears in multiple places which says "Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance..."
I couldn't see a way to reuse the footnote, so I copied it. However, the copy has been renumbered to "2". I'm expecting to use this particular footnote six times on this page. Is there any way I can avoid the bottom of the page looking like this?
  • 1 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
    2 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
    3 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
    4 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
    5 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
    6 Lower specifications may be used, but with reduced performance...
Many thanks

Suze
LTinker68
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by LTinker68 »

I haven't used footnotes myself, but can't you cross-reference to the first one instead of adding more footnotes? You might have to insert a bookmark in the first footnote to be able to xref to it.
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Lisa
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navoff
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by navoff »

What I ended up doing was making a footnote out of the first occurrence on a page and then just adding the same superscripted number next to the other "references". The xref tag is expecting to cross reference a bookmark or a heading level. The actual footnote is really like a span tag with a style applied to it that puts that text down in the footer of the page (which is why it gets repeated if you use the same text in more than one "footnote" on a page). For example:

Here's my text<MadCap:footnote style="mc-footnote-position: page;">Here's my footnote</MadCap:footnote>

In the output, where the <Madcap:footnote> tag is, a number would appear and would be incremented to the next number for each footnote on a page. The text inside the tag (Here's my footnote) then appears at the bottom of the page.

My subsequent "calls" to the same footnote would then look like this:

Here's more text<sup>1</sup>.

In my case, the document was going to be PDF only plus the references were in a cell of a table. If I tried to add a bookmark to the actual footnote (the spanned tags/text), it caused the table cells to display oddly. Flare has enough problems with table displays that I didn't want to add another monkey wrench into things. It does mean that if there are changes in the flow of the table content, I may have to move where the footnote is really at, but, at this point, at least it appears to do what I need it to do. Appearance wise, the footnoted superscripts look identical to ordinary superscripts, so a reader wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I'm not sure that an xref would work in any case, considering the way xrefs generate their displayed text. If it wouldn't work for a numbered list to reference the list item and get the list number in the generated xref text, I can't see it working for the generated footnote number. ArborText did a better job of handling cross-references so you could specify a target type (heading, table, list, etc.). It would include the auto-generated table or list number in the cross reference.
JRP
"How many slime-trailing, sleepless, slimy, slobbering things do you know that will run and hide from your Eveready?"
--Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson
LTinker68
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by LTinker68 »

navoff wrote:If I tried to add a bookmark to the actual footnote (the spanned tags/text), it caused the table cells to display oddly.
In the authoring environment or in the generated output?
navoff wrote:I'm not sure that an xref would work in any case, considering the way xrefs generate their displayed text. If it wouldn't work for a numbered list to reference the list item and get the list number in the generated xref text, I can't see it working for the generated footnote number.
Yeah, I just tested it and it didn't seem to work. I put a bookmark in front of the footnote and tried to xref it but it resolved to an empty xref. I then tried creating a span class with an auto-number format, insert a bookmark and xref it, but the same thing happened. It seems the auto-number works better if it's applied to a container element (p, div, li) instead of spanned text, even though the auto-number format itself worked.

I suggest submitting a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx asking for a way to xref to a footnote number. Unless someone else out there knows of a way to xref to a footnote.
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Lisa
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navoff
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by navoff »

navoff wrote:If I tried to add a bookmark to the actual footnote (the spanned tags/text), it caused the table cells to display oddly.
LTinker68 wrote:In the authoring environment or in the generated output?
I didn't test it in the generated output but that was largely because my system is somewhat antiquated and bogs down easily. However, previous experience working with tables that have spanned columns and rows has proven that Flare has some rendering issues there (and this table has some spanned rows/columns). What I saw in the authoring environment for complex tables matched the generated output. However, if the .htm file for the topic was loaded into any browser, the tables displayed correctly indicating the problem is in Flare's rendering, not the underlying .htm code.
JRP
"How many slime-trailing, sleepless, slimy, slobbering things do you know that will run and hide from your Eveready?"
--Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson
DocuWil
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by DocuWil »

I also tried some possibilities, but nothing is working.
So, I have submitted a request too. Hopefully it will be implemented in the near future.

For the moment, where I need it on the same page I go around by entering the number as text in the same format as the footnote.
Wil Veenstra

Documentation and Training Centre
Infologic Nederland
(Using Flare 11.1.2, Capture 7.0.0 and Mimic 7.0.0 in Windows 10 64-bit)
super-structure
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by super-structure »

I've got something of a work-around for this. Mind you, it is not pretty. However, it seems to work for both print & on-screen in the same source.

1. Just use footnotes as you would normally for the first occurrence within a topic (or chapter, etc.? haven't tried that...).
2. Build the online output (in my case, it's MS HTML Help - .CHM file).
3. Locate the topic containing the footnote pop-ups and view the HTML source code (typically, right-click and select View Source).
4. Copy the contents of the <span class="MCTextPopup">...</span> tags (element inclusive).
5. In your Flare source markup, paste this in all the locations where you wish to re-use this same pop-up footnote.
6. In each of the re-used locations, add a condition attribute to the <span> element so that the span is only included in "screen" output.
7. After each re-used locations, add a superscript element with the same number of the footnote, with a condition attribute for "print" output.
8. Rebuild your targets.

My first footnote appears as follows in the markup (incidentally, this is a matrix table of features for various software packages, with footnotes when there are limitations):

Code: Select all

<td class="...">Yes<MadCap:footnote style="mc-footnote-position: topic;">
                <MadCap:variable name="Footnotes.1" />
        </MadCap:footnote>
        </td>
Subsequent re-use appears as:

Code: Select all

<td class="...">Yes
        <span class="MCTextPopup" MadCap:conditions="Default.ScreenOnly">
               <span class="MCTextPopupBody_0" style="display: none; ">
                       <MadCap:variable name="Footnotes.1" />
               </span>
                        <a href="javascript:void(0);" class="MCTextPopupSpot_0" onclick="FMCTextPopup( event, this ); return false;" style="font-size: 0.9em; vertical-align: super">9</a>
               </span>
         <sup MadCap:conditions="Default.PrintOnly">9</sup>
</td>
Obviously, this requires a lot of manual work and doesn't easily allow you to insert new footnotes in between existing ones without a lot of work (I said it wasn't pretty). I'd recommend anything like this to be done as a last step prior to final production.

Just the same, it works well in online & print output. I hope this helps you.
-Jason Coleman, P.E.

Sr. Manager Technical Content
Bentley Systems, Inc.
Johanna
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by Johanna »

This is exactly what I need to do but reading this I get really scared.
Indeed the workaround is not pretty even if it is great to share it here at least to unblock the courageous.
I hoped that in the meanwhile MADCAP has come up with a proper way to do this but I don't find any.
ChoccieMuffin
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

I "fake" my footnote symbols (or whatever you need to use). I know the user won't be able to click the fake ones, but at least they should be able to see what's what.

If you have three things that need to have the same footnote, in the body of the text insert the footnote marker character (formatted as sup if necessary). Yes, the user won't be able to click the link but I'm happy to live with that. Obviously this might not be an acceptable compromise for you, but that all depends on your business needs.
EileenP
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Re: How do I repeat a footnote?

Post by EileenP »

Four years later and I'm still looking for an easier (automated) way to do this.
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