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Subject: Re: [office] Sidenotes


At 13:53 2003 03 30 -0600, Philip Boutros wrote:
>Hi
>
>After reviewing a number of current and historical word processors and
>formatting languages I can provide the following information on
>sidenotes.
>
>What are they:
>Look here (http://www.info.com.ph/~etan/w3pantheon/style/sidenotes.html)
>for a CSS-based example.
>
>Who has them:
>At this point no major word processor has sidenotes although all can
>simulate the effect using text frames. They can also be simulated using
>CSS, XSL-FO (Paul Grosso please confirm this), PDF, etc. but not
>explicitly declared. 

Sidenotes are not really support in XSL-FO.  About all you could do
is try to do something with the list-* FOs with a negative left margin
on the "list-item", but this is not what I would call support.

XSL-FO does include some "side float" capability like CSS, but this
generally only works when the "floated" thing has intrinsic dimens
such as a graphic, so this doesn't really provide a solution for
side notes.

>DSSSL put them in a category called marginalia
>(Google it) and appears to support them. Interstingly the XSL
>requirements document (http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-XSLReq) specifically
>calls out sidenotes and marginalia but it appears they didn't make it in
>(Paul?).

The idea of that requirements document was to list everything 
anyone could think of--you might say these were the requirements 
for XSL version infinity.  They were never intended to be requirements 
of version 1.0.  (I wasn't a fan of this plan, but there you have it.)

Early on into the development of XSL 1.0, we agreed that sidenotes
and marginalia would not be supported by XSL 1.0.


>My take:
>Given that no major current word processor or formatting language
>supports their declaration I would say we don't need to add sidenotes to
>the open office specification.

I agree.

paul



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