[sword-devel] Note attributes - was Re: Note placement="inline" ?

[Peter von Kaehne]

Dear all,

Currently note type attributes (nor indeed note placement attributes)
are largely ignored by the engine (and the frontends).

It would be very easy to pass on the type attribute for further use. I
have done so in the Latex filters. 

Try after updating svn and compiling:

diatheke -b WLC -f Latex -o fx -k Gen.1.1

You will see the following output

\swordfootnote{1}{}{Genesis 1:1}{x-DHSource}(){P}

where x-DHSource is the type attribute which was in OSIS.

I would like to propose to add similar info to the footnotes handling
in xhtml filters, but to do it right would - as far as I can tell -
break possibly frontends and would require some changes - even if the
result was not used by a particular frontend

Currently a footnote is passed in osisxhtml by way of a complicated URI
containing info re origin etc:

<a href=\"passagestudy.jsp
action=showNote&type=%c&value=%s&module=%s&passage=%s\"><small><sup
class=\"%c\">*%c%s</sup></small></a> 

The place where I would propose a change is changing the "&type=%c"
into "&type=%s" and passing here the type as a string on. Currently
here is a "n" or a "x" passed to sigtnify xref vs footnote proper. 

Further changes to the footnote letter used "n" vs "x" could also
happen but are less likely to cause to anyone any grief.

Can I hear please any views on this?

I propose this as I think it is likely a valuable change which would
allow us to handle different types of footnotes in different ways. 

A further related improvement would be if we could filter out certain
types of footnotes via GlobalOptionFilters, but that is a different
undertaking.

Peter