Re: [BUG] HTML export does not preserve footnote label [9.6.15 (release_9.6.15 @ /usr/local/share/emacs/30.0.50/lisp/org/)]

[Protesilaos Stavrou]

Thank you Ihor for looking into this!

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Date: Fri,  5 Apr 2024 14:33:49 +0000

> [... 13 lines elided]

>> I looked into the ox.el and noticed that the export data does include
>> the labels. But 'org-html-footnote-reference' does not have a call to
>> get the label: it assigns a number outright. To experiment with
>> retrieving the data, I tried this:
>> ...
>>        (let* ((n (or
>>                   (org-export-get-footnote-label footnote-reference)
>>                   (org-export-get-footnote-number footnote-reference info)))
>> ...
>> Can we have footnotes with their label preserved? Or maybe is this going
>> to break a lot of functionality? I am aware the above not work for
>> footnote definitions, as those also get the number.
>
> The problem arises when only some footnotes have a label:
>
>     This is a test 1 [fn:n24aa:These are the contents] and here is 
> more[fn::another one].
>
> What to do with the unlabelled ones? Assign a number? If yes, what kind
> of number? `org-export-get-footnote-number' counts all the footnotes,
> including labelled ones; so that returned number will be 2 in the above
> example, leading to awkward ^n24aa followed by ^2 footnote.
> But even without `org-export-get-footnote-number', ^n24aa ^1 mixture
> might be awkward.
>
> One way could be only using footnote labels when _all_ the footnotes
> are labelled.

I think it is fine to have an all or nothing approach, if this is easier
to do.

Though I should have clarified my intent earlier: the idea is to use the
label as a fixed reference to the footnote, so that the link does not
change between exports. This is the same principle as what we do with
links to headings that have a CUSTOM_ID.

As such, the anchor text can still be the way it is now as an
automatically generated number sequence (^1, ^2, etc.), but the HTML
"id" and "href" values will be constructed based on the label of the
footnote, NOT its number in the sequence.

What do you think?

Thank you again for your time and efforts!

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
https://protesilaos.com