From: Tony J Ibbs (Tibs) [mailto:tony@lsl.co.uk]

I think I don't, in practice, mind the targets too much (the use of a dot after the number helps a lot here), but I do have a problem with the body text, in that I don't naturally separate out the footnotes as different than the rest of the text - instead I keep wondering why there are numbers interspered in the text. The use of brackets around the numbers ([ and ]) made me somehow parse the footnote references as "odd" - i.e., not part of the body text - and thus both easier to skip, and also (paradoxically) easier to pick out so that I could follow them.

I agree with this entirely. I think the current footnote syntax ``[1]_`` is *exactly* the right balance of distinctness vs unobtrusiveness. I very definitely don't think this should change. On the target change, it doesn't matter much to me.

Thus, for the moment (and as always susceptable to argument), I'd say -1 on the new form of footnote reference (i.e., I much prefer the existing ``[1]_`` over the proposed ``1_``), and ambivalent over the proposed target change.

Exactly.

That leaves David's problem of wanting to distinguish footnotes and citations - and the only thing I can propose there is that footnotes are numeric or # and citations are not (which, as a human being, I can probably cope with!).

I can (sort-of) see the value in distinguishing footnotes and citations. As a Pratchett fan (:-)) I'd probably use footnotes, but not so much citations. So I don't have much of a view on citations. But I suspect that using some form of DWIM [1]_ which distinguishes footnotes and citations based on the style of the reference (footnote is numeric or #, others are citation) would work fine in practice. _1. [2]_ Do What I Mean - is that a common term in Python circles? I picked it up from Perl... _2. Just trying out the new form. Hmm, feels OK... Paul.