Re: New, Just a few questions

[Jeff Kingston]

Why can't Lout do paragraphs of footnotes?  Long story, but
the essence of it is that Lout was designed to receive
vertical sequences of things into larger contexts - sequences
of lines onto pages, etc.  For paragraphs of footnotes you
have to receive horizontal sequences of words onto lines,
so you need "horizontal galleys" in Lout terminology, and
although they are implemented they are not really integrated
into the wider system.

I don't know why they are so hard in other systems but I
suppose for fundamentally the same reasons.

I guess you could try implementing wrapped footnotes by
placing a sequence of @FootPlace objects into a horizontal
galley targeted at some symbol at the bottom of the page.
You'll be trying something more advanced with horizontal
galleys than I ever did, however, so no promises.

Have a look at the @DropCap symbols, or whatever they
are called, for the only extant use of horizontal
galleys in production use.

Margin notes would probably work.  They will not break
across page boundaries but they will move down the
margin to get our of other margin notes' way.

You seem to have already found your way to a solution
which will build a single line of footnotes.  You
could easily extend that to something that built a
sequence of single lines of footnotes.  It would be
a kind of paragraph of footnotes, but not individual
footnote would break across a line boundary.

Can't think of any other ideas.

Jeff Kingston