footnotes and epub ebook

[bobcdy]

I'm using word 2003 to prepare an ebook. The original text is a very old
(1802) science book that has many long footnotes. When I finally set up the
ebook, it is probably best to congregate all the footnotes t the end of the
book, and it appears simplest to copy/paste all the footnotes one at a time
to that location. Eventually I need to convert the word document to plain
utf-8 text. On a short test doc my word 2003 crashes when I do this and I
think it is because of the footnotes.

Is it possible to relocate the footnotes as I'd like, and is there any way
to convert the footnotes to plain non-footnote text without losing the text
and placement of the footnotes.

Thanks for the help!
Bob

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

You can convert the footnotes into endnotes in the Footnotes dialog.

You can't convert the footnotes to plain text and have them retain
their placement without lots of handwork. If you mean footnotes rather
than endnotes, keeping them at the bottom of the page would use stuff
that wouldn't survive in plain text anyway..

 

[Yves Dhondt]

The OP is mentioning epub in his subject line. As the epub format is
actually xhtml at its core, the concept of footnotes is not available. This
is actually one of the greatest weaknesses of epub. The current workaround
suggested by epub specialists is to use some type of endnotes which provide
a 'back link'. Basically, when you click the endnote marker, the ereader
takes you to the endnote, and then when you click the endnote, the ereader
takes you back to where you were reading.

Having footnotes retain their placement is pointless. The entire concept of
epubs (or any decent digital book format) is that they reflow according to
the specfications of the device. The same book on a 6'' PRS-600 and a 9.7''
Kindle DX will look totally different. The latter will hold way more text on
one page (if you use the same letter size).

Yves

You can convert the footnotes into endnotes in the Footnotes dialog.

You can't convert the footnotes to plain text and have them retain
their placement without lots of handwork. If you mean footnotes rather
than endnotes, keeping them at the bottom of the page would use stuff
that wouldn't survive in plain text anyway..