How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on PDF

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olapinto
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Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:44 pm

How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on PDF

Unread post by olapinto »

Hi,

I´m new here and I used the Search facility on the forum to find my answers but, unfortunately, I couldn't find them...

What I would like to know is if there is a way of inserting footnotes on the text (it is mainly for PDF conversion after) or, if there is some other technique that allows me to insert references to certain parts or words of the text that would function like footnotes and could be readable in all formats, including PDF's...

Also, how can I make certain sections of the text to be printed together (not separated by page breaks) for PDF printing as well?

Thank you very much in advance,

olapinto
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Olapinto,

To keep text together you need to use the "Keep with next" attribute for paragraphs, which you can apply either manually for individual paragraphs or as part of a style definition. You can do this with the Keep with Next tool in Write > Paragraph or in the paragraph formatting dialog displayed by clicking on the small icon in the bottom right corner of Write > Paragraph (the setting is in the Line & Page Breaks tab of the dialog). You can define styles in Write > Styles > Edit Styles.

Footnotes is a little more tricky. There is no actual footnotes function in Help & Manual, for good reason: For almost all supported output formats the concept of footnotes is actually meaningless. You can't really put footnotes on an HTML page, that is a print concept that doesn't make sense in electronic documents. For electronic documents you should replace footnotes with popup topics or inline text toggles, which are hyperlinks that expand their text within the current paragraph when the user clicks on them (the text can have a different style to make it stand out).

For information on creating popups see Basic Working Procedures > Creating Topic Files > Creating popup topics in the HM help. For information on using toggles see More Advanced Procedures > Toggles: Expanding Text and Images.

In PDF you can't use toggles or popup topics but with a little trickery you can turn popup topics into quite passable footnotes (learn how to create popup topics before doing this):
  1. Place the cursor at the bottom of the topic where you want to insert the "Popup Footnote". Then click on the Snippet tool in Write > Insert Object (look up Snippets in the index of the help for more information).
  2. Select "From Topic" and "Snippet is linked", then select the ID of the popup topic file from the Select Topic: dropdown list and click on OK. This will embed a copy of the popup topic in the page, which will be shown with gray shading.
  3. Add and format a heading above the "footnote" if you want.
  4. Select the entire embedded topic and its heading (if applicable) and select the conditional text tool in Write > Insert Object. Choose IF and "Adobe PDF" and "Printe Manual" options. Click on OK to enclose the block of text with the conditional text tags. When you publish this "footnote" will only be included in PDF and RTF output.
  5. Find the links to the popup topics and create alternative text for the PDF version using the conditional text tool. You do this by enclosing one version with IF PDF conditions and the other version with IF CHM/HTML etc. conditions.
  6. Repeat for all other popup topics you want to use as footnotes.
If you want to get fancy you could also insert an anchor above the block of footnotes with the anchor tool in Write > Insert Object and then create a link to the anchor in the alternative text for the PDF version that will work when the PDF is displayed on screen. (You need to activate links for PDFs in Configuration > Publishing Options > PDF for this to work.)

If you want to have a smaller font and different paragraph settings for the "footnotes" you can do this by using styles in your popup topics and applying different style definitions for PDF output.
  1. Select Write > Styles > Edit Styles and define styles for formatting your popup topics.
  2. For each style you define, define different font and paragraph settings in the Screen View and Print Manual View tabs. The settings in the Print Manual View tab will only be used in PDF and RTF, the settings in the Screen View tab will be used in all electronic formats.

    TIP: You can switch between these views in the editor with the Screen/Print button in the status bar below the editor.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Alexander Hompe
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Unread post by Alexander Hompe »

I really like these creative workarounds but maybe we have to clarify to Olapinto that these footnotes are no footnotes in the common sense. They do not stand at the bottom of the PDF page but at the end of the topic text (somewhere at the page).
Regards, Alex
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Alexander,
Alexander Hompe wrote:They do not stand at the bottom of the PDF page but at the end of the topic text (somewhere at the page).
Well, actually they don't have to be at the end of the topic, although that is probably the best place for them -- you can put them anywhere in the text you like. However, you can't place them at the bottom of the current page because you don't know where that is going to be, so it would probably be better to call them endnotes rather than footnotes... :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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olapinto
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Unread post by olapinto »

Hi all!

Thank you very much for your quick answers. Theyhave been helpful already, at least for me to understand the whole concept underlying H&M about references. I will try all these workarounds and let you know about the results!

thanks!
Susan Gottwald
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Re: How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on

Unread post by Susan Gottwald »

IIs there really no solution to create footnotes in the commun sense? I would like to use Help & Manual for my research paper. Because I also build the documentation for the software in H&M. But to write to the scientific standard I have to quote correctly.

At the moment I fail only at the quotes. For the other problems I have come in a roundabout way to a solution.
Does anyone have a solution for my quoutes problem?
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Tim Green
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Re: How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Susan,

There is really no way to add footnotes in the common sense at the moment. You have to use the workarounds described above. I suggest that you post a request to the Wish List section, the developers are still looking at features to include in Version 6.0. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Susan Gottwald
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Re: How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on

Unread post by Susan Gottwald »

The above described solution does not meet the scientific standard. For these states, the quotes have to be really in the footer of each PDF page.
This is really a big problem with H&M 5 I hope the next version simplifies the creation of quotes, bibliographies and figure lists!
Laini Giles
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Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:27 pm

Re: How to insert footnotes or something that replaces it on

Unread post by Laini Giles »

Thanks for this great workaround, Tim. I just tried it and it will work for what we need.
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