Welcome
Welcome to Michèle’s Footnotes plugin, designed to transform HTML-like footnote tags into InDesign footnotes.
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General information
Plugin name: Footnotes
Version: 1.0.0 – 8/18/26
Fee: Year subscription US$19,99 – Includes minor and major releases.
Availability: Adobe Marketplace
Status: not yet published
Source code in book: Adobe InDesign Automation of Nonfiction Books via JavaScript
Requirements
The author could very well insert footnotes directly into his/her Word manuscript as they are InDesign compatible. IMHO, it is a lot preferable to insert footnotes via tags as it is less of a burden on the author, is less error prone, provides flexibility and more.
Tag based footnotes plugin requires that the author insert <FTN> tags in the text wherever he/she wants to direct the reader to a footnote in the bottom of the page. The author inserts the footnote’s text in a convenient location via a two-level tag such as <fnote>footnoteKey[A]Footnotes text</fnote>. The author inserts an <FTN> tag wherever he/she wants the little footnote’s superscript number to appear. In the same page, somewhere convenient, he/she defines the footnote’s <FNOTE> text tag. When you he/she is done, he/she moves the <FNOTE> tag to the end of the document.
The <ftn>/<fnote> tandem constitutes a key/value pair. The key is the means to identify which <fnote> tag to use for a given <ftn> tag. This tandem makes it incredibly easy to manage footnotes: add, delete and modify them.
The above describes how the author inserts footnotes into his/her manuscript. The only requirement is that the author should use the <ftn>/<fnote> tandem to define footnotes as opposed to defining them via Word footnotes.
What it does
The Footnotes plugin relies on a set of key/value tags <ftn>/<fnote> to create InDesign footnotes. The author embeds an <ftn> tag which contains the footnote’s key, the footnote’s content lies in an <fnote> tag somewhere convenient. I chose the end of the document.
Here is a typical <ftn>/<fnote> pair: The Napoleon biography the author is writing wants to provide an example of Napoleon’s incredible narcissism. Here is the text:
Extreme narcissism is one of Napoleon’s psychological traits<ftn>ST_NAPOLEON</ftn>. As he acquired ever increasing power…
Notice the <ftn> tag above; it marks where the little footnote superscript number should appear. The author then creates a corresponding <fnote> tags which he/she places anywhere in the manuscript, as follows:
<fnote>ST_NAPOLEON[A]Napoleon discovered that the Catholic calendar did not have a St. Napoleon. He got in touch with the then pope Leo VI in 1806 and demanded that August 15th, his birthday, be declared the St. Napoleon day. Unbelievable!</fnote>
The reader will see a little superscript number just after kind of dough and text at the bottom of the page which contains the footnote’s text. The Footnotes plugin uses InDesign’s findGrep to create <FTN> and <FNOTE> arrays which it then uses to create the footnotes.
Please note that a dialog box displays the HOMEDIR full path to enable the plugin user find the FootnotesReadme.txt file.
For more information
You will find source code in my InDesign automation book so that you could roll your own Footnotes plugin.
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