Move footnotes to a standard plugin

General

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around moving the footnotes feature from an enterprise-only plugin to a standard, core feature in Discourse. pradyunsg highlights that footnotes are currently only available as an enterprise plugin, despite being supported in GitHub and GitLab markdown, making Discourse’s default markdown inconsistent with GFM. pfaffman clarifies that self-hosted users can install the plugin, but the argument for standardizing it is compelling. robbie.morrison supports the idea, especially for academic use, and points out outdated documentation stating footnotes are only on Teams and Enterprise plans. mattdm notes that footnotes now appear on business-tier sites, and sam confirms they are now included in all tiers. robbie.morrison seeks clarification on installing the plugin, and JammyDodger explains that footnotes are a plugin, not a theme, and must be installed via the admin plugins section.

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Currently, footnotes are only available as an “enterprise” plugin, with Discourse-provided hosting.

This creates a suboptimal experience now, since GitHub supports footnotes now (Footnotes now supported in Markdown fields - GitHub Changelog) and GitLab also has support for footnotes (GitLab Flavored Markdown (GLFM) | GitLab Docs).

Currently, Discourse’s default markdown does not match GFM (for both the major git-based hosting providers for open source projects), with the primary missing piece being footnotes. It would be a good idea to bring the supported syntax back into being synchronised with GFM.

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Putting this in a separate post, because “new user can only post two links”.

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Just making sure that you understand that self hosters are free to install it.

Your argument for moving it to core makes sense to me, though. Perhaps your “all your markdown friends are doing it” argument will be compelling!

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I admin a discourse instance in an academic context (here) and would really encourage footnotes to be built in as standard by default. Perhaps with a site config for admins to turn this feature off as needed.

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This showed up on my (business plan) sites! Is this official? Is it Discourse Christmas?

(I’m still hoping to move to Enterprise once I get the company processes all… processed. But that’s proving slow, so this is exciting!)

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Yes :slight_smile: we now include the plugin in all tiers

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The following documentation says “Footnote is available on Teams and Enterprise hosting plans.”

I guess that needs correcting therefore? R

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And continuing, where does one obtain the Footnote theme? It is not offered on my instance of discourse that I can see:

  • Hamburger ▸ Customize ▸ Themes ▸ Components ▸ Install …

Discourse version 22 March 2022. Should I talk to my provider instead? TIA, R

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Footnote is a plugin rather than a theme, so would need to be installed/made available by your hosting provider.

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Okay, so one needs to look here instead:

   ☰ ▸ Admin ▸ Plugins ▸ discourse‑footnote = installed