NOTE:	This plugin topic is obsolete, the plugin has been renamed to FootNotePlugin

Feedback on EndNotePlugin

-- IanBygrave - 05 Jun 2006

Thank you Ian for contributing this Plugin! This is very useful for document authoring.

Small suggestion on the example. You could document it in a way so that users see the effect also if the Plugin is not installed. For example:

• You type:
  • Tim Berners-Lee%ENDNOTE{Tim Berners-Lee is now director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and Professor of Computer Science at Southampton ECS.}% invented the World Wide Web.
• If the plugin is installed you get:
  • Tim Berners-Lee¹ invented the World Wide Web.
• And this at the end of the page:
  • 1: Tim Berners-Lee is now director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and Professor of Computer Science at Southampton ECS.
• Actual example, it renders properly if the Plugin is installed and enabled:
  • Tim Berners-Lee%ENDNOTE{Tim Berners-Lee is now director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and Professor of Computer Science at Southampton ECS.}% invented the World Wide Web.

For TWiki 4 it helps to add a note to enable the Plugin (see new Plugin template in PluginPackageHowTo)

Also, how about documenting and measuring the PluginBenchmarks numbers?

BTW, I am not familiar with the term "end note", more with "footnote". Is there any difference?

As an enhancement idea, it would be nice if the footnote has a link back to the text where the footnote was inserted.

-- PeterThoeny - 05 Jun 2006

Thanks for the documentation tips. I wrote this plugin in one evening while cooking pasta and watching TV. It was quite late when I wrote the documentation, so it's a bit sketchy.

Endnote/Footnote: Maybe footnote would have been a better name. I think footnotes come at the foot of the page, while endnotes are at the end of a chapter or book. Thinking of the topic as a chapter, I couldn't see how to make footnotes work on a printout of a topic that spans many pages.

Benchmarks will follow.

-- IanBygrave - 06 Jun 2006

Thanks for contributing this plugin, Ian!

Lately it has sometimes been suggested to use ToolTipPlugin for "end notes" - with the problem left: How to get these visible when printing?

Now this plugin can possibly later be combined / improved with the tooltip plugin functionality to achieve this effect.

-- SteffenPoulsen - 06 Jun 2006

I have taken the liberty of adding the latest snapshot to SVN. This makes it easier for developers running a SVN install to try out the plugin.

(That the plugin is now in SVN doesn't mean future updates have to be done in SVN - but if you would like to, you can visit RequestAccessToDevelopBranch to get started).

-- SteffenPoulsen - 06 Jun 2006

SVN info for Plugin developers is at PluginsInSubversion.

-- PeterThoeny - 06 Jun 2006

IanBygrave, thanks for picking up the footnotes idea!!!

But, imho, this plugin should be renamed to FootnotePlugin as that's what it does. And it will be easier to grasp what it is intended to do. Along that line the %ENDNOTE{...}% should be %FOOTNOTE{...}% ...

I'd like to use this plugin combined with the BlogPlugin which means that one may want to have footnotes per blog posting, and then list all postings and their respective footnotes on the blog's frontpage, but don't mix up the footnotes of different postings. I doubt that this is possible right now as there is not enough control over footnotes right now.

On the plugin itself:

• how about having a format paramenter to %FOOTNOTE% so that the link to the footnote can be customized
• how about having a %FOOTNOTES{topicname}% tag to collect all footnotes of a topic (defaults to current) at a specific location.
• how about having a format parameter for %FOOTNOTES{...}% to customize the layout of all footnotes
• how about having css classes on every output
• do you really have to use the startRenderingHandler to implement the tags as this limits the usefulness of this plugin somehow as it does not play together with other plugins nicely.

-- MichaelDaum - 07 Jun 2006

Michael, I think the current implementation works for your case since the end-note is added at the end of every block of text, e.g. each include.

I like the idea to rename the Plugin to FootnotePlugin; this is up to the author to decide.

FOOTNOTES is very similar to FOOTNOTE. It might be a bit easier to distinguish if it is named FOOTNOTELIST instead?

How about adding an alternative syntax to %FOOTNOTE{}%, a {{curly brackets syntax}} as suggested in FootnotesFeature? This is the syntax of DokuWiki. It is faster to type and easier to read than the variable.

-- PeterThoeny - 07 Jun 2006

Working on some of those suggestions now. The {{curly brackets syntax}} and %FOOTNOTE{...}% are in. I'm adding a global config PERBLOCK to switch between end-of-block and end-of-topic notes.

-- IanBygrave - 08 Jun 2006

Renaming to FootNotePlugin seems like a good idea. This should probably be maintained in SVN, shouldn't it?

FOOTNOTELIST should also be easy to do. Could it replace the PERBLOCK setting?

I'll investigate css and startRenderingHandler if I get a spare weekend, which seems unlikely.

-- IanBygrave - 08 Jun 2006

I had to teach myself perl objects. FOOTNOTELIST added, and I stopped using startRenderingHandler. I was going to look at performance next, but it looks like I don't have to.

-- IanBygrave - 16 Jun 2006

One thing I'd love to see is allowing line breaks within notes. Currently {{ and }} or =%FOOTNOTE{ and }% must be on the same line.

This would make notes in a list item much easier to visually parse.

-- JamesParker - 19 Oct 2006

Unfortunately, there is a conflict between the endnotes plugin and the latexmode plugin. Latexmode often requires nested curly brackets. Can the plugin be modified so the delimiter can be selected by the user?

-- IanDSouza - 30 Nov 2006

A feature I'd like to see is the ability to refer to a single footnote multiple times. something like

%FOOTNOTE{ "footnote text" label="f1"}%

%FOOTNOTE{ ref="f1" }%

-- DiabJerius - 01 Dec 2006

Ian, any feedback on renaming the plugin to FootNotePlugin? I think the majority of users would like to see that.

How: Create a new plugin topic, and set the classifiction of the old one to ObsoletePluginPackage.

-- PeterThoeny - 01 Dec 2006

I've renamed this plugin to FootNotePlugin and marked EndNotePlugin as an ObsoletePluginPackage. I'll try to implement some of the suggestions on this page, but please give any new feedback on FootNotePluginDev. Thanks.

-- IanBygrave - 05 Dec 2006

Removed TestedOnTWiki flags as that will prevent this plugin from being listed at the fast report page (for installation of plugins using configure).

-- SteffenPoulsen - 09 Apr 2007

This is a bug in the FastReport. I fixed it, it now looks for TopicClassification of (Plugin|AddOn|Skin|Contrib)Package, and excludes the incomplete and obsolete packages.

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Apr 2007

Thanks - much better that way!

-- SteffenPoulsen - 10 Apr 2007

NOTE:	This plugin topic is obsolete, the plugin has been renamed to FootNotePlugin