Footnotes and Endnotes are hidden together with reference numbers!!!

users
#1

In scientific texts it is common and for some articles in many journals necessary to make an extra footnote or endnote for each reference. These journals also demand that within the main text more than 2 subsequent reference numbers should be written like: 2-5. If libreoffice should be really an alternative for usage in scientific writing at universities the correct implementation of a hiding feature concerning the reference number (footnote/endnote anchor) as given in MS-office is absolutely vital. Otherwise the libreoffice writer is not usable for millions of students and scientists.
If you write 2- 3 4 5 and try to hide 3 4 (together with the spaces), the endnotes themselves are also hidden.
A work around using small font size and white color leads to terrible spaces if you have more reference (e.g. 23-30). Interestingly these formattings are not applied to the endnotes themselves. Therefore the vanishing of the endnotes and also footnotes by hiding their reference number seems to be a bug.
In addition, if the whole text within an endnote or footnote is hidden the footnote/endnote is hidden completely. This can be avoided by at least leaving one space unhidden. As there is already this mentioned way to do so, there is no reason why the note itself should vanish, when the anchor is hidden, if the user would need this in some rare cases.
Whereas hiding only the reference number (footnote/endnote anchor) is a quite often needed feature.
(Besides the possibility to add a "hidden" button to the toolbar would be nice, but is not so important.)
At the moment I have to stick to MS-Word.

(A second, not really vital thing that keeps me at the damned Microsoft Word is the nice feature "Do Full Justification the way WordPerfect 6.x for Windows does". For many years people are asking for this feature in open office. Seems to be very difficult to implement.)

Werner

#2

I would disagree. I can't think of a single case when you need to refer reader
to multiple footnotes/endnotes at once.

What you are probably talking about, is bibliography (know also as "Works
cited" or "References"). There are two main styles for them:
1. Note system (Vancouver system)
2. Parenthetical system (Harvard system, "author-date").

For more information, check Wikipedia article on Citation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation>

I think that you are confusing endnotes with note system bibliography.

BUT this is known fact, that bibliographic feature of Writer is tragic. In
fact, I think it is unusable. So your point is valid in some way:
bibliographic feature in LO definitely needs to be worked on.

Until that happens, you may wish to use specialized software for referencing.
There are at least two that are free of charge:
- Zotero <http://www.zotero.org/>
- Mendeley <http://www.mendeley.com/>

There are also some paid programs, if you like.

#3

Since I am working in natural science, I am using the Vancouver system. As
you can see even on wikipedia ( http://
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation ) it is quite often the case that you
need more references at one passage in a text (compare e.g. "Broadly
speaking, there are two citation systems:[6][7][8]" or "These may be
referred to as citation formats as well as citation styles.[10][11][12]"
within the mentioned wikipedia article).
Some journal just demand to use [6-8] or [10-12] respectively in those
cases, what is not useful for a html document of course. So my post above
concerns only the problem of formatting foot- and end-notes and has nothing
to do with reference manager software. (Such a feature might be implemented
by providing a sample database for Libreoffice Base together with a suitable
Writer template.)
Best regards
Werner

#4

LibreOffice Writer is not capable of doing that. Either if you are using built-
in bibliographic feature, which is lacking some of basic functionality, or if
you are using foot- or endnotes as references.

As student of sociology, I mostly deal with social sciences and I am used to
authors who recklessly confuse footnotes, endnotes and bibliographic
references. But I would expect scientists from natural, physical and formal
sciences to be more strict.

Footnote is a place to add some further information, or comments, from author.
They are not important enough to include in main text, but may be valuable for
some of readers. Or they are simply funny remarks, which some people think
should be avoided in scientific text. This is also place for comments from
translator or publisher (although comments from translator/publisher are
indicated in other way than comments from author). The point is, that reader
may skip reading footnotes without loosing any of author main ideas.

Endnotes are footnotes put after the main part of the book or, less often, at
the end of a chapter, instead of bottom of the page. Some publishers prefer it
this way. If text in footnote is quite long (I have seen footnotes spanning
across two and more pages), perhaps it is better to use endnotes instead.

References contains information about sources and further reading about some
topic. These may be either full bibliographic entry (which has many
disadvantages in texts longer than few pages) or unique identifiers which
expand full bibliographic entry in bibliography, near end of a book.

These things should be distinguished. Yet, due to historical reasons and
habit, they are not. Many people place references in footnotes.

In that Wikipedia article footnotes contains almost only references. Only
footnote 14 contains what footnotes should contain -- commentary. Footnote 13
contains references to works expanding topic, so they may be treated as either
footnote, or reference (depending on writing style).

I am still sure that you are using wrong function (although it may provide
something that *looks like* what you want to achieve). I still can't think of
a single reason why anyone would want to insert multiple footnotes (multiple
commentaries) at one place. Why don't just join them, if they refer to exactly
the same part of text?

Although I still agree with you, that Writer is lacking some functionality in
that area and it could (and perhaps should!) be improved.

#5

Some journal just demand to use [6-8] or [10-12] respectively in those
cases, what is not useful for a html document of course. So my post above
concerns only the problem of formatting foot- and end-notes and has nothing
to do with reference manager software.

LibreOffice Writer is not capable of doing that. Either if you are using built-
in bibliographic feature, which is lacking some of basic functionality, or if
you are using foot- or endnotes as references.

As student of sociology, I mostly deal with social sciences and I am used to
authors who recklessly confuse footnotes, endnotes and bibliographic
references. But I would expect scientists from natural, physical and formal
sciences to be more strict.

Footnote is a place to add some further information, or comments, from author.
They are not important enough to include in main text, but may be valuable for
some of readers. Or they are simply funny remarks, which some people think
should be avoided in scientific text. This is also place for comments from
translator or publisher (although comments from translator/publisher are
indicated in other way than comments from author). The point is, that reader
may skip reading footnotes without loosing any of author main ideas.

Endnotes are footnotes put after the main part of the book or, less often, at
the end of a chapter, instead of bottom of the page. Some publishers prefer it
this way. If text in footnote is quite long (I have seen footnotes spanning
across two and more pages), perhaps it is better to use endnotes instead.

References contains information about sources and further reading about some
topic. These may be either full bibliographic entry (which has many
disadvantages in texts longer than few pages) or unique identifiers which
expand full bibliographic entry in bibliography, near end of a book.

These things should be distinguished. Yet, due to historical reasons and
habit, they are not. Many people place references in footnotes.

Part of the problem is that different editorial styles mandate
references be placed in footnotes rather than in a separate reference
(endnote) section at the end of the work. Thus the confusion between
references, footnotes, and endnotes. Strictly speaking there is a
difference between footnote/endnotes and references in terms of content
and purpose. References strictly have only bibliographic information.

#6

Miroslaw Zalewski's suggestion to use Zotero or an other software for
referencing might be accompanied by some undesirable “side effects”.
Sometimes I am using Zotero, but I always copy the formatted reference
(Zotero Strg+Shift+C) directly into the LibreOffice foot- or endnote. In
this way one can avoid a lot of problems, if one is collaborating with
people using another reference management software or none at all. If one
uses Zotero default insertion with field codes and remove them before
sending to other coauthors, then those have problems, if they would like to
insert additional references as Zotero (and all other similar software, I
know) replaces the field codes with formatted normal text and does not
convert the references to LibreOffice foot- or endnotes.
There are enough problems, if I am working with LibreOffice and the
coauthors are using a Microsoft product.

Am I really using the wrong function, when inserting references in form of
foot- or endnotes like millions of MS-Office users are doing? LibreOffice is
definitely NOT missing bibliographic features except the fixation of this
bug. If somebody really wants more, there are programs like Biblioscape,
Endnote, Reference Manager, Mendeley, Bibus, Zotero etc.

On th other hand I can only imagine a very few occasions, where somebody
needs to hide a foot- or endnote together with its anchor. The only
reasonable situation I can imagine, is, that someone wants to reproduce an
original historic document with footnotes, where some numbers are missing.
In order to be able to use the automatic numbering for the rest, it might be
useful to hide both anchor and note. As already mentioned, this is possible
in MS-Word, although you need to hide anchor and note in a separate step.

Another situation would be, if someone wants to use foot- or endnotes like
commentaries. In my opinion this would really be a misuse. But nonetheless I
suggested, to implement an option, whether foot- or endnotes should be
hidden together with the corresponding anchor, which might be added to the
menu at: "Tools-Options-LibreOffice Writer-Compatibility". This would help
those, who used foot- or endnotes as commentaries in the past.

You can find document showing every detail of the problem and further
arguments, why this bug should be fixed at:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54393.