[TW5] drop down list for book references requested

[Jon]

Hi,

I have been using Danielo's Footnote Macro for some time to insert a reference to the source of the material typing <<footnote "1" "Book title p.56">> which then appears as a clickable "1" (or there's a later variant of the macro where the information is revealed on hover).

This is great, but  the notation and the source needs to be manually inserted each time.

I came across Tobias's List Popup in the examples at http://tobibeer.github.io/tw5-plugins/#appear and wondered if this could be adapted to insert the text from the list into the tiddler, the list would then be the various book titles from which one would be chosen.

Or, if there is something already out there which has been done for the job?

Thanks in advance
Jon

[Jon]

To clarify, and this might be too complicated, I'd like the "1" associated with the particular book title selected from the drop-down inserted into the text, rather than the actual book title. So the "1" would still work as a footnote to reveal the book title on click or hover.

Thanks, Jon.

On Sunday, 3 January 2016 09:02:48 UTC, Jon wrote:

Hi,

I have been using Danielo's footnotes for some time to insert a reference to the source of the material typing <<footnote "1" "Book title p.56">> which then appears as a clickable "1" (or there's a later variant of the macro where the information is revealed on hover).

[Jed Carty]

I am not sure where you want the dropdown to be. Are you imagining something as you edit the tiddler?

It shouldn't be too terribly difficult to edit the footnote macro so you would only need to do <<footnote 1>> and then have a data tiddler that lists the references and get the same result as the current footnote macro but you wouldn't need to type out the second input every time. That way you could also edit all the references from a central location and they would all be updated.

Without more about what sort of workflow you want that is as much as I can say.

[Jon]

Hi Jed,

I hadn't thought that bit through, but yes, I was thinking of it working whilst I edit the tiddler and your suggestion sounds like it would work nicely. Would <<footnote 1>> call book 1 and <<footnote 2>> call book 2? or would <<footnote 1>> call the whole list and then you can select book 3?

Thanks, Jon

[Jed Carty]

Using <<footnote 1>> for book 1 wouldn't be hard to do, making <<footnote 1>> list the first footnote which you then set would be more difficult and you couldn't set it in the editor without a lot of work.

The two reasonable options would be <<footnote 1>> which always gives the same reference wherever it is or <<footnote 1>> which marks the first footnote and after you leave the editor there is a one-time dropdown menu at the location of the footnote in the text which you can use to set the reference for that footnote.
Unless you have some great desire for the second version I would suggest the first one. While the second one is doable it would be pretty complex to create because of the bookkeeping required.

[Jon]

Hi Jed,


The first option would mean the user would first need to remember which footnote referred to the book they wanted to reference, so it wouldn't work well in practice, particularly as the list grows.

The ideal, as you've suggested, would be to be able to reference a list from a central location, so I think the 2nd option would be preferred but I appreciate the complexity involved might mean it's not worth the bother.

Thanks, Jon

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Jon / Jed,

I believe there are two things being intermingled here:

1. footnotes
   
2. citations

While there are times we may want to use both together, they're two quite independent things.

• footnotes
  create content within a document — in our case each tiddler is  basically a "document" — and that content — while contained in the document (but otherwise bloating the main document while reading) — is only displayed at the very end of it (or when clicked => this part is actually what the tobibeer/appear widget is indeed intended to be used for, but not quite for editing footnotes [yet] ...which would only work if each footnote was actually a tiddler or at least a "text reference" of its own rather than some part of the tiddler we're looking at)
  
  
• citations
  allow to reference sources, ideally indeed contained in a global dictionary of sources / references, not one per tiddler / document
  => there's only one bookshelf to refer to
  => you always want to use the same notation to refer to the same publication / reference

So, when it comes to adding either of those to the document, we're doing two quite independent things:

• footnotes
  define the content that will be taken out of context and displayed elsewhere (at the bottom)
  => merely referenced at the place where inserted (perhaps displayable via tooltip / popup)
  
  
• citations
  ideally, we want to select from a list of predefined sources (perhaps from a dictionary) and have the reference inserted
  => can be anywhere in the document, including footnotes
  => may link to some other tiddler or an external uri directly

Best wishes,

Tobias. 

[Jed Carty]

Yes, for either option I mentioned there would be something like a dictionary tiddler that holds the citation information. The macro would be the footnote par The question is how the macro references the citations, either as 1, 2, 3 etc. (or whatever key is used) or as a placeholder for footnote 1 which is then set to the desired citation using a drop-down menu in view mode..

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Jed,

 

The question is how the macro references the citations, either as 1, 2, 3 etc. (or whatever key is used) or as a placeholder for footnote 1 which is then set to the desired citation using a drop-down menu in view mode..

I think citations should always be referenced somewhat like [Meyer2000]... which some macro may use as a reference to an index or tiddler, but otherwise not touch. To me, those are unique identifiers for references that the author of a document (/ tiddler) defines in an unambiguous manner, which is never generated, and wouldn't be very practical if it was just some incremented numeric index of some data tiddler.

In fact, that data tiddler should hold the user defined index, in a readable manner, sorted alphabetically... while the value should adhere to some common citation style so as to specify a fully qualified source reference.

Best wishes,

Tobias.

[Jed Carty]

I meant something like \cite{foo} in LaTeX. For the macro you would either put <<footnote 'some unique identifier for the citation'>> or <<footnote n>>. If you use <<footnote n>> than when you leave the editing view you can set which citation goes with footnote 1 and it will be displayed everywhere in your text you have <<footnote n>>. The first one is easy to make, the second may be a better option in terms of usefulness but it is harder to make.