This is probably of extremely niche interest, but I’ve recently figured out a way to write posts using footnotes and post them in different places with only a moderate amount of pain. That process is as follows:
I write the posts in markdown in Obsidian using standard markdown syntax. This has a not-that-horrible interface for adding footnotes. More importantly, Obsidian has this Linter plugin which can automatically re-number footnotes as they are deleted or added: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/obsidian-linter
My main blog renders standard markdown footnotes with no problem. Apparently footnotes even work in (most) RSS readers.
On LessWrong, it’s still possible to turn on the markdown editor. It’s hidden deeply enough in settings that I didn’t imagine it would work, but to my surprise if you paste footnotes it does handle them correctly and they seem to be treated as “real” footnotes. (Although it seems to systematically delete space after footnotes.)
Substack by default seems to want you to manually insert each footnote using a ton of mouse clicks and manual interaction. However, I was able with some effort to make this python code work: https://gist.github.com/rgreenblatt/fe15e19f1b7cc553892dda0ecc50602b You paste the markdown into the substack editor, then you call that code on the link and I think it opens up a web browser and automates all the clicking substack wants you to do. (I just noticed this was created by our own Ryan Greenblatt, thank you!)
Overall, I’d say this took me an hour or two to set up (with heavy AI help) and reduces the per-post friction to maybe 5 minutes total. Not sure how long-term this setup is, but if something breaks, I guess I can just go back to not using footnotes.
This is probably of extremely niche interest, but I’ve recently figured out a way to write posts using footnotes and post them in different places with only a moderate amount of pain. That process is as follows:
I write the posts in markdown in Obsidian using standard markdown syntax. This has a not-that-horrible interface for adding footnotes. More importantly, Obsidian has this Linter plugin which can automatically re-number footnotes as they are deleted or added: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/obsidian-linter
My main blog renders standard markdown footnotes with no problem. Apparently footnotes even work in (most) RSS readers.
On LessWrong, it’s still possible to turn on the markdown editor. It’s hidden deeply enough in settings that I didn’t imagine it would work, but to my surprise if you paste footnotes it does handle them correctly and they seem to be treated as “real” footnotes. (Although it seems to systematically delete space after footnotes.)
Substack by default seems to want you to manually insert each footnote using a ton of mouse clicks and manual interaction. However, I was able with some effort to make this python code work: https://gist.github.com/rgreenblatt/fe15e19f1b7cc553892dda0ecc50602b You paste the markdown into the substack editor, then you call that code on the link and I think it opens up a web browser and automates all the clicking substack wants you to do. (I just noticed this was created by our own Ryan Greenblatt, thank you!)
Overall, I’d say this took me an hour or two to set up (with heavy AI help) and reduces the per-post friction to maybe 5 minutes total. Not sure how long-term this setup is, but if something breaks, I guess I can just go back to not using footnotes.