[latexrefman-discuss] Example about Gibbon's book

[Vincent Belaïche]

Hello Jim,

I found that this exemple is distracting, it was hard to understand to
me --- probably because, like many people who will read this manual, I
am not a native English speaker, and not so familiar with anglo-saxon
protestants' culture.

I have found this: https://fkaplan.wordpress.com/tag/notes-de-bas-de-page/

En 1776, quand Edward Gibbon publie History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, l’esthétique de la continuité romanesque a déjà
gagné. Ses notes sont reléguées en fin de volume pour ne pas briser
l’immersion de la lecture. Sur les conseils de Hume, il demande le
rétablissement des notes en bas de page dans l’édition suivante, mais
regrettera ce choix dans ses mémoires.

This means that in the 1st release of Gibbon's book the notes were at
the end of the book, Hume advised Gibbon to use footnotes instead of
endnotes in the next version published. Gibbon did that, but then he
wished he wouldn't have, as stated in his memories.

>From the text that you give in latexrefman all of this is unclear and
distracting, because the reader does not know that the early version
--- that about which D. Hume was complaining --- had endnotes instead
of footnotes, so you get the feeling that Hume was unhappy with the
amount of notes, rather than how they are typeset, and you cannot
understand his advise to use footnotes or marginnotes,

I propose to rephrase as follows:

@example
There are over a thousand footnotes in Gibbon's \textit at domain.hid and
Fall of the Roman Empire at domain.hid reading an early version in
which the notes were not at the bottom of pages but at the end of the
book, David Hume complained, ``One is also plagued with his Notes,
according to the present Method of printing the Book'' and suggested
that they ought ``only to be printed at the Margin or the Bottom of the
Page.''@}
@end example

where I added only

  in which the notes were not at the bottom of pages but at the end of the
  book

and

  ought

Well, this makes the example quite a bit too long, but all of the
length is within a footnote, so nobody is going to read it :-D

   Vincent.