Re: [Docutils-users] footnote numbering?

[David G. <go...@py...>]

David Abrahams wrote:
> I'm a bit confused about how footnote numbers are chosen.
> 
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/boost/boost/libs/pyt
> hon/doc/PyConDC_2003/bpl.txt?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain
> 
> Shows that my first and second numbered footnotes. [#1] and [#2], are
> coming out as 3 and 4.  Whaaaa?

Actually, your footnotes [#1], [#2], and [#3] are coming out as 4, 5, and 6,
respectively.  I assume that a third footnote was added shortly after your
message.  Notice a pattern forming?

The "#" in footnotes & references indicates auto-numbering.  [#label] form
of footnotes is called auto-labelled.  The label is used to link footnote
references to the footnotes themselves (so that the order doesn't matter),
and to allow multiple references to each footnote.  Ordinary internal
references are also supported for footnote labels::

    Here's a footnote reference: [#fnref]_.
    Here's another: [#fnref]_ (same number).
    Here's a regular reference: fnref_.

    .. [#fnref] Here's the footnote.

The first two references are turned into numbers (either superscripted or in
brackets), the last one is left as "fnref".

If you use numbers as the footnote reference labels, those numbers cannot be
used for footnote numbers -- they share a namespace.  If you want to use
those specific numbers, don't use auto-numbering: use [1], [2], [3] instead.
This deserves a mention in the spec.

-- David Goodger    http://starship.python.net/~goodger

Programmer/sysadmin for hire: http://starship.python.net/~goodger/cv