Simple Footnotes

This plugin implements basic footnote and endnote functionality for Joomla! articles.  It takes footnotes marked within the article text and converts them into HTML anchors.

This plugin was originally derived from a Tips & Notes plugin.  I didn’t want my footnotes implemented in CSS and Javascript when Joomla had the power to process them in the backend, so I rewrote it.

Current Version: .1

Version .1 of the footnotes plugin is available from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/simplefootnotes/frs/.

There is also a feature request and bug tracker system at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/simplefootnotes/tracker/.

Usage:

Footnotes ExampleSimply place the following marker in the text where a footnote is desired:

{footnote}Put your footnote text here.{/footnote}

The plugin will automagically replace each reference with a sequentially numbered footnote marker (1, 2, 3, and so on) and place the footnote at the bottom of the article.

The plugin also supports endnotes.  These are marked this way:

{endnote}Put your endnote text here.{/endnote}

All endnotes, wherever they are placed in the article, are simply moved to the bottom of the article and numbered sequentially.  No marker is placed in the text where they were.  Note that this is contrary to the typical definition of “endnote,” it was developed because I needed the functionality.

Note: If the article uses a “read more” link, neither footnotes nor endnotes will show up on pages where just the text before the “read more” link is displayed.  If an article does not have a “read more” link then notes will show up anywhere the article is displayed.

Further Note: If an article uses pagebreaks to create a multi-page article then footnotes and endnotes will display on whatever page they fall on.

Installation:

  1. Install the plugin
  2. Go to your Plugin Manager and enable the plugin
  3. In Joomla! articles insert footnotes per the instructions above

34 Responses to “Simple Footnotes”

  1. Eric 14 August 2008 at 22:25 #

    give a screent shot is doesn’t hurt!!

  2. Jeff 24 August 2008 at 16:19 #

    I don’t quite fully understand how this plugin is supposed to work on the front-end. Is it possible for you to provide a demo?

  3. James 24 August 2008 at 21:20 #

    @Jeff: Unfortunately I don’t currently have the capabilities to provide a demo. But, to appease Eric and help you out, I have added a screenshot of the front-end. Basically it creates an HTML div at the end of the article, gives it a heading of “Footnotes” and places all the footnotes underneath that. Each note in the article text is replaced by an HTML anchor tag that jumps you to the relevant footnote below.

  4. Jimmy 21 September 2008 at 14:08 #

    Any chance there’s a version of this for Joomla 1.0 versions?

  5. James 27 September 2008 at 19:27 #

    Nope, sorry…

  6. Ricardo Cristof Remmert-Fontes 6 May 2009 at 15:21 #

    hi,

    this is a great Plugin, but I discovered some strange behaviour:

    when displaying the intro of an article on the frontpage, which contains footnotes (in the intro), the footnote-tag is not parsed. It shows {footnote}etc.{/footnote}.

    When open the article via click on read more or the tittle, the footnotes work fine.

    Actually, here is an example:

    What is the reaon for that?

    Best regards,
    Ricardo Cristof

    • Josué Mouco 21 April 2010 at 11:41 #

      I there,

      I come back with Ricardo’s bug which I need help because I get the some problem. Is there any solution?

      Thanks,

  7. Richard 20 May 2009 at 05:25 #

    It works great. I like it!

  8. Jim 23 May 2009 at 04:43 #

    @Ricardo: Presumably the Joomla hook that I am using to call the plugin gets processed on page display, but not on front page display. I may look into changing that at some point in the future.

  9. Marrett 11 August 2009 at 04:15 #

    Just used it for education site with .The educational article becomes more useful with footnotes.

    This is great plugin. Thank you very much .Will give it 5 stars on JED .

    A request though- it would be nice if the text for the footnote coud be a link to a website.

    Thanks once again for a very useful extension!

    • Jim 11 August 2009 at 12:32 #

      You should be able to do that. Just include the HTML for the link inside the footnote. Like this: {footnote}<a href=”link.html”>This is my footnote.</a>{/footnote}

      • Ricardo Cristof Remmert-Fontes 11 August 2009 at 12:33 #

        Hi,

        it’s even easier: simply mark the word/sentence, you want to link and click the “Insert URL”-button.

        best regards,
        Ricardo Cristof

    • Jim 11 August 2009 at 12:35 #

      Ah, good point. I forgot about the WYSIWIG.

  10. Martin Podolak 14 November 2009 at 23:12 #

    Hi, I’ve adapted the plugin for multilingual use: http://podolak.net/en/russian-studies/45-studium/112-simple-footnotes-multilingual

  11. Greg 6 February 2010 at 23:39 #

    So far html tags () have not worked in footnoted text. Has then been a problem for anyone else?

    • Jim 8 February 2010 at 14:52 #

      Greg–they should work. What exactly does your tag look like? Feel free to shoot me an email (using the About page).

  12. deborah R. Brenner 15 February 2010 at 17:02 #

    Hi,
    I have been trying to copy some word documents with endnote & footnotes into Joomla 1.5 but if I take out the formatting from word (clear format) the document width goes all over. If I do it through Text Edit, it looses the footnotes & end notes.

    Is your extension going to be able to solve that without manually having to correct it?

    • Jim 15 February 2010 at 20:16 #

      This extension does not preserve endnotes and footnotes from word. You will have to put those in manually in the correct spot using the syntax described above.

  13. deborah R. Brenner 15 February 2010 at 21:02 #

    Do you happen to know how I can accomplish that without doing it manually?

    • Jim 16 February 2010 at 01:27 #

      Nope. Word is finicky. Sometimes footnotes copy out correctly, sometimes they don’t. You could try different editors (FCK editor vs. TinyMCE editor vs. other) as they may clean the incoming HTML differently. Joomla! allows you to change the editors via the plugins.

      Simple Footnotes definitely won’t do it. It’s designed to easily create footnotes in documents–not import them!

  14. deborah R. Brenner 16 February 2010 at 18:23 #

    Found the solution!!!!

    1. Open Word doc and copy
    2. Open Google docs and paste using Command+V
    3. Edit html code and delete width, press Update
    4. Copy Google doc and paste it in Joomla
    :)

  15. Donald Ackley 11 March 2010 at 21:31 #

    Great plugin! would it be possible for you to add a button for editors where you could simply highlight the text you want to footnote, then click the button and the {footnote} {/footnote} would be inserted? Sort of like you see with the page break or read more buttons. Would really speed things up!

    Thanks!
    -Donald

    • Jim 12 March 2010 at 01:50 #

      Good idea. I can give it a go at some point, but it won’t be anytime soon as I’m pretty busy. If you’d like to try, I’d be happy to integrate the code and give you credit.

      • Donald Ackley 12 March 2010 at 17:16 #

        Believe me I tried, I am now convinced more than ever that I am not much of a coder. I even tried to cobble something together using other plugins based on JC Editor, but no Joy :(

        -Donald

  16. Mike 23 August 2010 at 07:51 #

    I lack a real endnote feture. The endnotes are typically printed separately at the end of a book. In a joomla environment this means that endnotes from many different articles sholud be saved to a single article.

    Otherwise this plugin works as expected. For use in non English text you have to change the “inserted headers” footnote and endnote, as well as the word “back”.

    • Jim 23 August 2010 at 22:47 #

      Hm… that could be done. Essentially you would specify an article for all endnotes to show up in, and then it would write to that article.

      That said, I won’t have time to make that change for quite a while. Hopefully some day…

  17. Mike 23 August 2010 at 23:23 #

    Ok. But you also have to have an unbroken number serie from more than one article. Thus, the plugin must now the order of the submitting articles so it can sort and count correctly.

  18. Devin 11 September 2010 at 06:07 #

    The plug-in doesn’t seem to work when I’ve got Uber Page Break working. I’m trying to find a solution that will let me show footnotes, AND have page breaks in K2. Any suggestions for how I can make that happen?

  19. Mike 7 November 2010 at 03:16 #

    My ISP has updated PHP to version 5.3. As a result, the footnote plg doesn’t work. An update is needed.

    (Joomla is not yet fully compatible with the latest php, but the core and most extensions works with error reporting disabled. However footnote doesn’t work at all. The joomla adaptation to new php is only a matter of time. However every single extension has to be checked.)

    • Tom 2 January 2011 at 16:56 #

      It does not work with Joomla 1.5.22 but it easily could!
      To make it work with this version just remove the last word from file “footnotes.php” in line:
      function onBeforeDisplayContent( &$article, &$params, &$limitstart )
      - remove $limitstart (the 3rd parameter) and it works just fine.
      Great plugin!

  20. Christian Sweningsen 12 April 2011 at 22:03 #

    Anyone know if this now works with php 5.3+??

  21. Mikael Branting 5 July 2011 at 16:11 #

    Not much hope of development here. The plugin is doomed. Got this message from James Frank:
    James Frank
    @jamesefrank James Frank
    @mibrant01 If you can’t tell, I’m rarely on Twitter. And, unfortunately, no updates. Not doing much Joomla these days.

    • Jim 6 July 2011 at 01:34 #

      Now, now, “doomed” is a bit of a strong word. Just because I’m not actively developing it doesn’t mean that it can’t be used. And if a feature’s not there, you’re welcome to contribute or fork the project and add it.

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