The RefNotes plugin is an extension for build-in DokuWiki footnotes syntax. In addition to the basic footnotes functionality it provides a number of extra features, most notably:

• Multiple independent note classes on the same page (e.g. citations, footnotes, etc).
• Customizable look of the references and notes.
• Render the notes at any place on the page, not only at the very bottom.
• Often used notes (e.g. book references) can be shared between different pages.

Download and install the plugin using the Plugin Manager using the following URL. Refer to Plugins on how to install plugins manually.

• refnotes-2012-07-15

There are two major parts of the syntax: references and note blocks. The references are used in a text body to define a note and during rendering are replaced with a short link. The basic reference syntax is similar to the footnotes:

Here goes the reference[(This is a note.)].

Apart from the basic functionality provided by footnotes, the references have a number of extra features:

• Better support for multiple references to the same note.
• You can name a note and later refer to it by name from another reference. The named notes can be shared between different pages via the reference database.
• The notes can be grouped into namespaces. For example, you can keep footnotes apart from bibliographical references.
• References can be hidden from rendering and used only to define the note text. This can be convenient if you want to keep the notes apart from the main text body.

The note blocks indicate a page location where text of the notes will be rendered. They are optional and if there are no explicit note blocks on the page, all notes will be rendered at the end of the page. The minimal syntax for the note block is:

~~REFNOTES~~

Apart of specifying the notes location the note blocks can be used to:

• Render notes from a certain namespace.
• Render only part of the notes. For example, this can be used to render the notes in multiple columns.
• Change formatting of the references and the note blocks.

For more details on the extended syntax see the complete syntax description.

The RefNotes plugin has its own configuration interface that is available from the administration page. This interface allows to control some general settings, predefine commonly used namespace styles and notes (it's the only place to define inline notes). The predefined namespaces and notes are available on any wiki page without explicit declaration.

The configuration page heavily uses JavaScript, so it must be enabled or the page will be completely useless.

• Added support for structured references.
• Added BibTeX syntax support in the reference database.
• Added Data plugin support in the reference database.
• Added selection of rendering style for structured references and notes.
• Added support for merging multiple namespaces into a single note block.
• Improved handling of note names. The names are no longer limited to alpha-numeric characters.
• Improved control over inline note formatting.
• Fixed non-operational configuration UI on some webhost servers.
• Fixed compatibility with DokuWiki Angua.
• Fixed a couple of minor issues.

• Added support for structured note definition in the reference database.
• Added note text alignment style.
• Improved detection of hidden notes.
• Fixed handling of references inside of list items.
• A number of fixes in handling of database references.

• Fixed ignoring of the settings from General section.
• Fixed a couple of minor issues.

• Added reference database.
• Fixed disabled configuration UI on DokuWiki installations that use URL rewriting.
• Fixed a number of minor issues.

• First public release

Please report bugs or feature requests at the bug tracker.

See older topics on the discussion archive page.

I use RefNotes to add references to a bibliography. It works great but for one thing: if I have multiple occurrences of [(xxx)] in a page, then I get multiple occurrences of it in the bibliography (REFNOTES) section.

I've read the documentation several times, but cannot figure out how to eliminate it.

Can anyone help?

— Fil Salustri 2013/07/28 20:45

It heavily depends on what “xxx” stands for. If it is literally “xxx” then I would suggest to use named notes: first reference is [(x3>xxx)] and all subsequent ones [(x3)].

— Mykola Ostrovskyy 2013/08/02 21:14

An actual example: I changed the first occurrence of [(Eek00)] to [(eekels>Eek00)]. I left all other occurrences unchanged. You can see what I get at the bottom of http://deseng.ryerson.ca/dokuwiki/research:design_science.

I wish I could understand what I was doing wrong.

— Fil Salustri 2013/08/05 19:53

Change it back

In plugin terminology, those things that are repeated in the notes block are called back-references. Your problem seems to be that you use back-ref-format: note (the default). Try to play with other styles that are available for back-ref-format. For example, back-ref-format: a; back-ref-base: sup; note-id-font-weight: bold might look better.

— Mykola Ostrovskyy 2013/08/06 22:09

Ah-hah! I get it now. Thanks for your patience. Problem resolved.

— Fil Salustri 2013/08/06 18:52

I had difficulties making the plugin work, so I fixed it to work on my system, see here — Elie Roux 2013/10/10 18:20

why i cant get it work like this structured? i want a box with references info like on wikipedia people and books — Mona Texy 2014/04/05 11:20

You have to be more specific if you want to get some help. What are you doing? What do you expect to get? What do you get instead? — Mykola Ostrovskyy 2014-05-23 08:42

I have problems rendering structured text. I have used some of the examples, just to test:

<refnotes>
refnote-id       : 1
reference-base   : text
reference-format : []
note-id-format   : []
note-id-base     : text
</refnotes>

[(HarvRefSys>>
note-text : Harvard System of Referencing Guide
url       : http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm
)]

[(KnuthAoP2>>
author     : Donald Knuth
title      : Arts of Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms
edition    : Third Edition
published  : 1997
publisher  : Addison-Wesley
note-pages : xiv + 762 pp.
isbn       : 0-201-89684-2
url        : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming
)]

The subject of random number generation and has been extensively studied in computer science [(HarvRefSys)] and [(KnuthAoP2)].

What I get is

######

The subject of random number generation and has been extensively studied in computer science [1] and [2].

[1] > note-text : Harvard System of Referencing Guide url : http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm

[2] > author : Donald Knuth title : Arts of Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms edition : Third Edition published : 1997 publisher : Addison-Wesley note-pages : xiv + 762 pp. isbn : 0-201-89684-2 url : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming

######

The citations in the text are ok, but the text in the references is not what I'm expecting.

What am I doing wrong?

— Miguel 2014/05/16 13:49

It looks like you are using an old version of the plugin. Just tried fresh install of DokuWiki 2014-05-05 with RefNotes 2012-07-15 – looks okay. — Mykola Ostrovskyy 2014-06-17 08:07

I really love your plugin, it could be exactly what I need. I'm trying to get it work with bibtex references. I have created a file in wiki/data/pages/refnotes/biblio containing a Bibtex reference inside “code Bitex” snipets. :

<code bibtex>
@Article{Bezivin2004,
  Title                    = {In Search of a Basic Principle for Model Driven Engineering},
  Author                   = {Jean Bézivin},
  Year                     = {2004},

  Abstract                 = {In November...}
}
</code >

I tried to get a reference to that with something like

[(:refnotes:biblio:Bezivin2004)]

, but whithout any success… Any ideas ? — Nils B. 2014/12/08 22:30

First make sure that reference database is enabled in the plugin configuration and its namespace is set to :refnotes:. Then read reference database documentation page, namely where it says:

Do not confuse this namespace (part of DokuWiki page name) with namespaces of notes (RefNotes formatting) defined on the page — they are completely independent. For example, on :refnotes:programming page you can define a note called :ref:Knuth68. In order to reference this note from some other page you should refer to :ref:Knuth68.

Since you didn't specify any namespace for Bezivin2004 note, it falls into the root namespace. If you even consider using BibTeX, I guess, that wasn't the intention. Again, read the documentation:

The namespace can be either specified as part of the entry key or in a separate comment. The namespace specified in the comment is used for all following entries within the current code block that do not have namespace specified explicitly.

So I would recommend to start your BibTeX page with

@Comment{refnotes,
  namespace = "biblio"
}

and use [(:biblio:Bezivin2004)] to add references to the note. — Mykola Ostrovskyy 2014-12-10 23:44

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