I've never seen a good way of handling footnotes in HTML. Most systems pile up all the footnotes at the end of the document. However, if the footnote references an image, you're now scrolling back and forth trying to understand what's happening. With LaTeX, the footnote is placed in context.
Several thoughts.
The first is about footnotes (I assume that you refer to \ref{}s and \cite{}s). In LaTeX you need to define references in advance, e.g. in a .bib file most likely, and then reference them. Similarly you can do in HTML5, with the difference that the references could be easily clickable and allow navigation (you can obtain the same by using certain bibliography styles in LaTeX but it doesn't come built-in). Textile (I didn't mean that HTML5 should be used natively) already does so. Also, the position of the footnotes can be handled by CSS separately from their content, e.g. you can have a CSS which overlays references at the bottom of the page while your are scrolling, or a CSS for print which pile them at the bottom of the document. It seems pretty to me. Second, imagine if academic papers were published in HTML5, how difficult would be to navigate from a paper to another by following hyperlink references? No more search through Google Scholar or publisher's websites.
I completely agree with you that adding cross-linking to referenced papers would make research hundred of time easier. On the other hand, I think that that would be better served by adding link support to the bibtex parts of pdflatex than switching entirely to HTML5.
As for the rest, I was referring to the literal \footnote command. I'm not sure that the CSS approach is really the best, simply because you don't view webpages the way that you view printed documents. As you scroll down, you'd have footnote bars at the bottom of the screen populating and depopulating depending on which marks just entered or left the screen. That would grow nauseating very quickly. It might be better to include some sort of mouse-over method, but that still feels hacky.
Comments
I've never seen a good way of handling footnotes in HTML. Most systems pile up all the footnotes at the end of the document. However, if the footnote references an image, you're now scrolling back and forth trying to understand what's happening. With LaTeX, the footnote is placed in context.
Several thoughts. The first is about footnotes (I assume that you refer to \ref{}s and \cite{}s). In LaTeX you need to define references in advance, e.g. in a .bib file most likely, and then reference them. Similarly you can do in HTML5, with the difference that the references could be easily clickable and allow navigation (you can obtain the same by using certain bibliography styles in LaTeX but it doesn't come built-in). Textile (I didn't mean that HTML5 should be used natively) already does so. Also, the position of the footnotes can be handled by CSS separately from their content, e.g. you can have a CSS which overlays references at the bottom of the page while your are scrolling, or a CSS for print which pile them at the bottom of the document. It seems pretty to me. Second, imagine if academic papers were published in HTML5, how difficult would be to navigate from a paper to another by following hyperlink references? No more search through Google Scholar or publisher's websites.
I completely agree with you that adding cross-linking to referenced papers would make research hundred of time easier. On the other hand, I think that that would be better served by adding link support to the bibtex parts of pdflatex than switching entirely to HTML5.
As for the rest, I was referring to the literal \footnote command. I'm not sure that the CSS approach is really the best, simply because you don't view webpages the way that you view printed documents. As you scroll down, you'd have footnote bars at the bottom of the screen populating and depopulating depending on which marks just entered or left the screen. That would grow nauseating very quickly. It might be better to include some sort of mouse-over method, but that still feels hacky.