Re: Footnotes/Endnotes: Have They Worked for Anyone?

From: msevior_at_physics.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Tue Nov 25 2003 - 16:13:22 EST

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    > Hi -- I am a student who has been downloading Abiword every so often for
    > at least a couple of years now, and I am impressed by the progress it
    > has made. I would really like to migrate to a single word processor that
    > I can use at home under Linux and at school under Windows (Abiword runs
    > nicely from a Zip disk in the Windows computer labs; don't try this with
    > OpenOffice.org).
    >
    > I'd move to AbiWord in a flash if it weren't for one problem: footnotes
    > and endnotes. They've been listed as a feature since Version 1.1x, but
    > they've always seemed to be more broken than working -- even in my copy
    > of the just-released 2.0.1 (Windows version).
    >
    > Maybe it's just me? Well, I've roamed around the archives of this
    > discussion list, checked the Twicki, and searched the Web at large for
    > anyone reporting success using notes in AbiWord. No luck.
    >
    > Hence my question: Has anyone out there actually written a footnoted
    > term paper, or any similar document that relies heavily on footnotes or
    > endnotes, using AbiWord? If so, how did you do it? And if you had
    > problems along the way, how did you solve them?
    >
    > By the way, here is a list of problems I've experienced. I won't
    > describe them in great detail because they all seem to be the subjects
    > of open bug reports:
    >

    Thanks very much for your detailed descriptions of your problems with
    footnotes. I've heard anecdotally that people have had problems with them
    but I haven't had such a nice description of the issues centralized in one
    place. I'll address these concerns and fix the problems.

    > 4608, "very large footnotes behave very badly" (they cause crashes and
    > file corruption)
    >

    This is a problem if the footnote gets bigger than the size of a page. I
    would be extremely surprised if anyone intentionaly wrote a document this
    way. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

    > 4707, "Can't select [or compose] to the right of a where a footnote was
    > added" (this is pretty important!)
    >

    I agree this is important I thought it was fixed. I'll check to see if it
    is and close the bug.

    > 5495, "Footnote insertion and formatting" (can't change note formatting
    > across whole document)
    >

    The format footnote dialog allows you to choose one of 12 different
    footnote styles and to restart footnotes per page, or per section. I'll
    check this again.

    > 5598, "Footnote" (can't change footnote separator line from default
    > long-and-centered format)
    >

    This has not been implemented true. If it's important I'll do it.

    > 5716, "Footnotes" (can't jump from note text back to body text at site
    > of note number)
    >

    This has not been implemented. It is actually not hard to do this. How do
    you suggest this feature be implemented.

    > 5773, 5774, 5775 (deleting both a note and its in-text note number is
    > difficult and/or dangerous)
    >

    I'll check these out. It should not be either difficult or dangerous.

    > I'll be happy to hear that everybody else has learned how to use notes
    > successfully in AbiWord and learn that I'm just having trouble with my
    > own dumb mistakes. Thanks for all responses!
    >

    Users should not have to make mistakes. I'll see what I can do.

    Martin
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