The EPUB footnotes have been changed in a strange way

[cited89426582]

After the recent update to InDesign 19.4, I noticed some changes made to how InDesign handles footnotes for EPUBs. Previously, it used a <div> with <p> for footnotes, which worked fine. However, they've now switched to using a <list>, which is causing issues.

This change completely overlooked that InDesign footnotes also have numbering and preceding characters. As a result, the output is quite ridiculous. Of course, I can fix this by changing the list-style to none in the _idFootAndEndNoteOLAttrs style, but the update mentioned, "Version 19.4 provides fixes for important functional, stability, and performance issues," yet the EPUB part seems to be a mess... I don't know what to say.

I'm using the Traditional Chinese environment, and I'm not sure if other language versions of InDesign 19.4 have similar issues.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, that was already mentioned. Both as an addendum to the export... and as appearing in the original export CSS.

The faults and fixes here are by no means clear. Something subtle is wrong with list export in v19.4, and it seems to vary greatly for each user.

[White Horse Press]

Thanks, Peter.

I had the same problem with html export from InDesign, and your solution has fixed it for me.

[Mateusz Czekala]

You saved my life! 🙂

[PanDawer]

As for me - I do not want my footnotes to be a list, so I change all the <li> back to <div>. Also the role=doc-backlink code is tagged as an error in my validator, so I have to delete it everywhere.  It is a nuisance.  I would really appreciate if Adobe could bring back the old conversion method it gave me better Epubs with fewer issues to repair in the coding.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You're free to modify the EPUB as you see fit, of course, and you may have to for certain legacy uses and readers... at least, for a time.

I don't think the change is some accident or whim of Adobe's, but a deliberate evolution of the EPUB implemeentation accommodating the new accessibility requirements. The problem with EPUB is that it's an unenforced standard, so if some players change their app to be consistent with new standards, all other apps and tools and readers and so forth are left out of step. Over time, some majority of tools conform, and we move forward with a mixed bag of elements that mostly work together again.

If you are having production or distribution problems with the new model, you can hack the output to conform to the prior model, or start looking for replacement tools that have moved forward in step with Adobe.