help! columns and footnotes

Feature requests, and in-depth discussions of features and the way Mellel works

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ppnkg
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Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:34 am

help! columns and footnotes

Post by ppnkg »

Can you please help me with this question: is it possible to have text body in two columns but footnotes in one column at the bottom of the text (on the same page)? Or do I correctly understand that when you tell mellel to place the footnotes at the bottom of the page, it arranges them in as many columns as the main text has?

(In Pages I get this result, because it places the footnotes at the bottom of the page regardless of how the main body is arranged -one or two column section. If Pages does this, I like to think it can be done with mellel too, but I don't seem to be able to figure out how.)

many thanks in advance
DRB
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Re: help! columns and footnotes

Post by DRB »

Mellel treats the columns as if they were independent pages. Thus, footnote indicators in the left hand column will have footnote texts at the bottom of the left hand column on the same page. Footnote indicators in the right hand column will have their footnote texts at the bottom of the right hand column on the same page. There is no apparent way to force the footnote texts themselves to extend across the page.

You could play around with two-column tables and fake the effect of what you want by ending the table slightly above the lowest part of the page, placing superscripted numbers instead of footnote indicators at the appropriate parts of the texts in the columns, and then make (pseudo-)footnote texts underneath the table which would extend all the way across the page. This is a kludge which some people might be interested in, but obviously it is faking the sort of thing you want and probably is beyond the simple procedure you would like.

Don Broadribb
ppnkg
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Re: help! columns and footnotes

Post by ppnkg »

Thanks for clarifying that. So I guess while this styling issue could come under the general feature request of 'better handling of footnotes', the way mellel treats columns prevents this sort of thing from being implemented ever?
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