If a content editor wants to re-use a footnote, the current process of ensuring the two footnote texts match exactly is slightly cumbersome. A more elegant solution or solutions could be implemented to help footnotes be easily re-used as intended.
Use footnotes normally, and notice the need to copy/paste footnotes exactly to get intended reuse.
1. Display a list or menu of already inserted footnotes, allowing one click re-use of existing footnote for currently inserted/edited footnote, AND/OR
2. On footnote dialog save button being clicked, check other existing footnotes for fuzzy matches, and offer to use either the existing footnote for both, the new footnote for both, or keep them separate, AND/OR
3. On content save, accomplish item 2 for all footnotes entered.
Define the fuzzy match criteria?
For solution 1, perhaps a single column of numbered footnotes, maybe on the right hand side of the footnote add/edit popup dialog box, with mouseover pop-up of the full footnote text, click the footnote number to copy that footnote text into the dialog box text area.
For solution 2, a separate popup dialog box asking whether the user wants to use footnote A for A and B, use B for A and B, or keep A and B separate
For solution 3, similar popup dialog box to solution 2, stepping through each fuzzy match found.
Unknown
Unknown, hopefully none.
NOTE: This is not actually proposed for release 3.0.1, but there is no 3.0-dev or similar "next milestone" available to tag this towards.
Closed: works as designed
4.0
Footnotes
Not all content is available!
It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.
This is probably slightly simpler in the 4x version now as there FootnotesModalDialogForm. I would suggest this be either a sub-module or a separate module though. In both cases FootnotesModalDialogForm can be extended to provide an alternative UI + handle saving as eg a custom entity. I'll mark as 'works as designed' for now, but if you want to contribute it as a sub-module, please feel free to re-open and have a merge request for that.