Proposal: Footnote reference Class

[Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>]

Dear TC members,

some time ago we agreed to merge the footnote element <text:footnote> 
and endnote element <text:endnote> into a single <text:note> element, 
where a new "text:note-class" attribute specifies whether the note 
actually is a footnote or an endnote.

At the same time, we merged the elements for text fields that contain a 
reference to a foot- or endnote (<text:footnote-ref> and 
<text:endnote-ref>) into a single <text:note-ref> that does not have 
"text:note-class" attribute. I in fact don't know what our reasons for 
not having these attribute for note references were, but I would like to 
propose to add it to the <text:note-ref> element for two reasons:

1. The <text:note-ref> element references foot- and endnotes by names. 
In the schema, these names are not ID's, but only strings. That means 
that foot and endnotes may have the same name, and that a 
<text:note-ref> that does not specify what kind of note it references 
may become ambiguous.
2. Note references may reference notes that are below the reference in 
the text. In this case, the type of the note might not be known when the 
note reference is read. This may cause problems for applications that 
differ between footnotes and endnotes either in its document model or in 
the view they craete fo a document. This issue might become more severe 
than we add new note types. The possibility to do so actually was one 
reason why we merged foot- and endnotes.

Best regards

Michael