[Bug 159137] Add "previous/next note" functionality to cross-references (conditional mix of "referenced text" and "above/below")

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159137

--- Comment #5 from William Friedman <will.friedman at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4)
> (In reply to William Friedman from comment #3)
> > In the style guides I consulted (CMOS, MLA, APA, OSCOLA)...
> Okay, the use case has a clear relevance (thanks for the elaboration).

Thank you, Heiko, for sticking with this!

> William, do you think a second reference type Previous/After (in addition to
> Below/Above) solves the use case?

Well, I think there needs to be two additional levels of customization for a
Previous/After (or, in my preferred naming scheme, Previous/Next; the usual
pairs are Before/After and Previous/Next [or: Previous/Following]). The first
would be to customize the text for "Previous" *and* "After/Next"; in the
example I gave in comment 3, that was "the previous note" and "the next note"
(but some might prefer "the following note" and some might want to omit the
definite article, etc.). So that's two customization options for the first
level. The second level of customization would be for what to write if the
referenced note *isn't* immediately before/after the current note, in my
example, "see n. X." 

When I look at the current layout under Fields | Cross-references, I see that
under "selection" there are two fields, both grayed out no matter which "refer
using" type is selected: Name and Value. Name corresponds to the full text of
the selected footnote, including its number. Value is empty. In order for this
new option to work as I imagine it, we'd need additional editable fields:

Previous Note Text:       ________
Next/Following Note Text: ________
Non-Adjacent Note Text:   ________

I *imagine* that the "non-adjacent note text" could assume that the
cross-referenced note number would appear immediately after whatever text in
the "non-adjacent note text" field, although someone might want to be able to
customize this further. For example, I could imagine wanting the non-adjacent
note text to include *two* reference types: "see n. X, above/below." This is
something that is also currently a pain to do, requiring inserting two separate
cross-references; perhaps if the feature I am proposing is implemented it would
pave the way for a more general solution allowing fully customizing
cross-reference text, allowing the insertion of *multiple* forms of reference
in a single cross-reference, e.g., "see chapter X, n. Y, above/below" -- which
would currently requires three *separate* cross-references!

Thank you for your consideration of this feature request!

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