Enable superscript as a footnote-reference option

[briancurtin]

There doesn't seem to be a way to make Nikola output superscript footnotes. I see some CSS in rst_base.css that hints at supporting it, though I also see the same about the brackets style, and I'm not sure how either are being chosen to be the output style by a nikola build. There's also a line in the CHANGES.txt file Made footnote references be superscripted. but I'm not seeing it work that way.

For example, if you write the following reStructuredText:

This has a footnote [0]_.

.. [0] a footnote

You'll end up with something like the following HTML:

This has a footnote <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="#id4" id="id1">0</a> which shows up in the [0] form in the rendered page.

If I add 'footnote_references': 'superscript', to the end of the following dictionary:

https://github.com/getnikola/nikola/blob/ec7acd2c68992b00a09486a05262b7b2a070cef4/nikola/plugins/compile/rest/init.py#L115-L128

Then the output changes to the following HTML, apparently per footnote_references in Docutils.

This has a footnote <a class="footnote-reference superscript" href="#id4" id="id1">0</a> which shows up as a superscript 0.

Request

I'm wondering if there could be a FOOTNOTE_REFERENCES_STYLE config option that one could be set to superscript to allow this?

[ralsina]

Hmmm why not just style footnote-reference? It does look like a superscript in my site at least :-)

[briancurtin]

I'm not sure if it's because my site is basically base-jinja plus some minor CSS tweaks or what, but for example https://briancurtin.com/articles/using-elastic-apm-to-visualize-asyncio-behavior/#id3 only became a superscript reference like yours after I added that dictionary change.

[ralsina]

First of all, sorry about taking 3 months to answer!

With a more careful look at my site, that has a <sup> in it .... and it was done using markdown :-P

I'll take a real look with reSt in a few hours.

[ralsina]

Ok, the default-default-default, straight-from-master takes this:

Write your post here. [1]_

.. [1] A footnote.

And does this:

<a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="#id2" id="id1">1</a>

And that looks like this:

So, not really sure, but I suspect something is overloading something else in your specific CSS.

[Sponge5]

Hi, I had the same issue and went into the rabbit hole. Since this issue isn't closed I'm going to "necrobump" it.

• Nikola v8.2.2
• Docutils v1:0.18.1-1

Input:

Write your post here. [*]_

.. [*] test

Expected output:

<a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="posts/test/#footnote-1" id="footnote-reference-1" role="doc-noteref">
    <span class="fn-bracket">[</span>
        *
    <span class="fn-bracket">]</span>
</a>

Output:

<a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="posts/test/#footnote-1" id="footnote-reference-1" role="doc-noteref">
    ::before
    <span class="fn-bracket">[</span>
        *
    <span class="fn-bracket">]</span>
    ::after
</a>

Apparently docutils are giving one pair of extra brackets to the output since 0.18 according to this issue. Those are the ::before and ::after lines, that's an upstream issue.

Also, I'd like to not have the other pair of brackets there, so like this: <a class="footnote-reference superscript" href="posts/test/#footnote-1" id="footnote-reference-1" role="doc-noteref"> * </a>

Maybe in that case there needs to be ::before and ::after which insert <sup>, <\sup>? In any case, the rest/__init__.py change suggested by @briancurtin works as a workaround in that case.

[Sponge5]

Apparently the docutils issue is being resolved.

I've looked into the docutils source and the fn-bracket is being added to the footnote in all cases, I guess I'll have to patch my own version then.

[Sponge5]

Aaand apparently the other pair of brackets which is inserted on Nikola's side is fixed in master as of 6 days ago, thanks @Kwpolska !

Still doesn't change the fact that I'll be patching my copy of docutils to not have any brackets in my footnotes, as docutils put them in regardless.