The Footnote sub-menu of the Note menu provides method to create a new note from a selected word or phrase, this the intent that it act as a reference to the source text. In one combined action, Footnote creation:
- creates a new note
- creates a text link, of link type "note", from the selected text to the new note
- creates a link, of link type "Note +", from the new note back to the selected text
- either:
- if a note text window has focus and part of $Text is selected, the selected text becomes the name of the new note.
- if a note text window has focus and no text is selected, or if the current window is a major view (Map, Outline, etc.) then the footnote is titled "Note for [name of selected note]".
The notes using the "Note for" style of naming don't increment - if there are two such footnotes for a common note both with have the same name. Tinderbox can happily cope with the latter but the user may wish to
Depending on which footnote creation option is chosen the location of the new note is either as a:
- sibling: next sibling to the source note
- child: last sibling child of the current note last (as in new last child at time of note creation).
It might seem odd to have this placement choice and 'child' might seem the generally logical choice. In an outline, a container can easily be expanded/collapsed to show footnotes. However, if working in map view and desiring to keep everything in view on the same map, the 'sibling' option avoids having to find child footnotes and drag them up to their parent's level just so they show up on the map.
The different link types used for links to/from the footnote make it easier to identify notes with footnotes or footnotes themselves.
Although a possible end point for Tinderbox footnotes is are article footnotes when data is exported to other formats, there is no method for collecting and inserting them at the end of an article - this must be done by the user's export template design.
An alternative way to create new notes from source text is to simply drag a text selection to an Outline or Map view.
