Footnotes at the end of each printed PDF page

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi all,

I’d like to know how to get the footnotes compiled at the end of each printed page when compiling to a PDF document. This is way better for academic writing then end of document notes which force the reader to toggle between two pages all the time.

I tried the “before page break” option in the footnote/comment pane of Compile, but that is not what I am looking for…

Anybody has a clue? Is it at all possible?

Thanks,
Matt

2

The PDF generator in Scrivener is not really intended for academic writing. :slight_smile: It’s mainly meant to be a quick proofing tool, though I imagine it can be used to create end content if the document formatting is fairly simple. I’m not aware of many in academia using Scrivener for A-Z, given how often rigid style requirements are enforced. Most everyone have to step off at W or so, and finish off to Z with Word or similar. RTF is the best format for that (excluding Apple Pages, which just has remedial RTF import; use .doc/x with the improved converters for Pages).

That said you may be able to switch the PDF engine to “Proofing” in the Print Setup compile option pane. That uses our improved converters to lay out footnotes. Unfortunately it also has some problems—most notably some fonts will not work with it (bitmaps, Postscript and OTF/T1), so we call it “Proofing”.

That is for sectional endnotes. Some styles call for the notes of a chapter to be collected at the end of that chapter. So before the page break would accomplish that.

3

Wow super! Thanks for this great reply, Amber!

I updated my version to get the new Print Setup option pane and did the proofing version and it worked to get the footnotes at the end of each page! I did not thoroughly check if other bugs were created, but it seems to work fine. I use TNM 12, so no problem for the fonts, it seems.

You got one happy (academic) customer here!

4

You’re welcome! We almost called the proofing mode essay mode, or something like that, because it really is very close to being good enough for academic work. Anyway, I hope it continues to work well for you.

5

When does the windows version get this feature? It should be in the compile options as well as
“at the end” and “at some sort of weird marker.”

Dumping the footnotes at the end of 100 pages is bizarre. (cf: Any discworld novel)
The whole concept of the footnote is that it goes at the foot of the page it is on, isn’t it?