ENDNOTE.TXT - A Practical Method for Handling Endnotes in Text Files

   Writers who work in plain ASCII text sometimes need footnotes in 
their files. However, while editing, it's nice to be able to move, 
add, or delete paragraphs with notes without having to manually 
renumber all the footnotes. Commercial word processors like Microsoft 
Word or Corel Word Perfect have an easy method of handling notes in 
which deletions or rearranging text is no problem. The notes are 
automatically renumbered as needed. Is such a system available users 
of Vim, Emacs, Vedit, VDE, PFE, TDE, EditPad, Notepad, NoteTabs, or 
other ASCII editors?

   Yes. If you have Perl or Awk installed, you can use ENDNOTE.PL or 
ENDNOTE.AWK to facilitate note creation. You execute Perl or Awk with 
the appropriate script plus your input file to generate a formatted 
output file. Here's how it's done from the command line:

       awk -f endnote.awk your_essay.txt > new_essay.txt   # for awk
       perl endnote.pl your_essay.txt > new_essay.txt      # for perl

   The ENDNOTE programs generate "endnotes": note references that are 
printed in final form at the end of a document. ENDNOTE does not print 
the notes at the bottom of each page (technically called "footnotes").  
The following paragraph shows how to use ENDNOTE:

   First, in the body of the document you must reserve a place for the 
in-text note references with a four-character string, like this: [##] 
The string consists of a left bracket "[", two pound signs "##", and a 
right bracket "]". The ##-signs will be converted to 1, 2, 3, etc.  
when the script is processed. The brackets will be left alone and 
extra space will be closed up, so you will see "[1]", not "[ 1]"; 
notes higher than 99 are fully supported. If you split your files into 
multiple chapters, ENDNOTE supports an optional switch [##] to begin 
numbering at any positive integer.
[[
##. Sample reference: William Lane Craig, _Reasonable Faith_, rev. ed.  
(Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994), pp. 67-68.

##. If the optional switch syntax is used, the command line is

       awk -v start=N -f endnote.awk your_essay.txt     # for awk, or
       perl -s endnote.pl -start=N your_essay.txt       # for perl

where "N" should be replaced by a whole number such as 8, 23, etc.  
Note that in perl, '-s' must occur before endnote.pl and '-start=N' 
must be placed afterwards.
]]

   Second, somewhere below the paragraph with the in-text references, 
you must add the endnote references, properly spelled out. The endnote 
references should be placed in a block delimited by '[[' and ']]', 
which should be alone on a line. For editing, it's easiest if the 
'[[Endnote block]]' occurs directly below the paragraph which contains 
the in-text references, though in fact the '[[Endnote block]]' can 
occur anywhere at all.

   List the endnote references in the same order as the in-text notes.  
The numbering system for them is a three-character string, "##." 
(pound, pound, period). It is customary to print them flush left, but 
not absolutely necessary. [##]
[[
   ##.  As you can see here.
]]

   Some suggestions on spacing. You may place note references directly 
after a word[##] or insert a space after the sentence. [##]  If your 
text editor does automatic paragraph reformatting, beware that the 
'[[Endnote text]]' block is not reformatted as well! It's easy to 
reformat a paragraph and discover that the placeholders '[[' and ']]' 
(which must be *on a line by themselves*) have been pulled into the 
rest of the paragraph by your text editor. Finally, if you put the 
'[[Endnote text]]' block into a separate paragraph below the body text 
(with a blank line between the body text and the note text), you will 
have *2* blank lines between the body text paragraphs when the output 
prints. If this bothers anyone, let me know.
[[
##. Like this.

##. Putting a space before the left bracket is looks nicer, IMO.
]]

   ENDNOTE has an error routine to see if the body text has the same 
number of note symbols as the endnote text block. If the note symbols 
cannot be matched up, ENDNOTE will abort with an error message. Of 
course, you will need awk or perl to run ENDNOTE. [##]
[[
##. This page contains links for obtaining awk and perl:

     http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/htmlchek/awk-perl.html
]]

   Finally, I must give credit where credit is due. The idea for 
ENDNOTE comes from Eric Meyer, the author of VDE (a powerful shareware 
DOS editor). [##]  Eric Meyer wrote WSNOTE, a note management program 
for WordStar that handles both endnotes and page-bottom footnotes. 
WSNOTE generates WordStar-specific output, so I wrote ENDNOTE to do 
something similar with plain ASCII files.
[[
##. VDE can be obtained here: http://members.aol.com/wolffsoft/vde.htm
]]

-- 
The ENDNOTE Perl and Awk scripts and this document (ENDNOTE.TXT) were
written by Eric Pement, pemente [=at=] northpark.edu, on 3/25/2002.