Convert links to footnote with docx output

[tamas-ferenci]

Is it possible to achieve the effect of links-as-notes but with docx output? (I.e., that links are printed as footnotes.) Unfortunately, links-as-notes seems to work only for pdf output currently.

[cagix]

You could probably replace every link with a (link wrapped in a) footnote using a simple Lua filter - both Note and Link are inline elements (cf. https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#type-link).

[tamas-ferenci]

Thanks @cagix for the idea! I originally thought that it'll be much more complicated, but this seems to work:

return {
  {
    Link = function (link)
        temp = link.content
        temp[#temp + 1] = pandoc.Note {link.target}
        return temp
    end,
  }
}

Nevertheless, I'd appreciate if you could check it (is it indeed what you had in your mind?), because I have no experience with Lua.

[cagix]

That should do the trick 👍 Maybe @tarleb can weigh in and give some feedback on the Lua coding style?

However, your script would preserve the link text, so it would turn

Lorem ipsum [Pandoc is great](https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#examples) foo bar 42.

into

Lorem ipsum Pandoc is great[^1] foo bar 42.

[^1]: https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#examples

Is that what you want? I would have expected something like this:

Lorem ipsum[^1] foo bar 42.

[^1]: [Pandoc is great](https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#examples)

[tamas-ferenci]

Thanks for the observation! You're right, but yes, that's what I intended. A realistic example:

More information can be found in [Pandoc's manual](https://pandoc.org/lua-filters.html#examples) about the filters.

If this is converted to docx with the intention of later being printed to paper then the "Pandoc's manual" part needs the remain in the text so that the sentence is meaningful.

[cagix]

@tamas-ferenci You could probably reduce your script to

function Link(link)
    link.content:insert(pandoc.Note(link.target))
    return link.content
end

[tamas-ferenci]

Thanks! That also seems to do the trick (and looks much more elegant!).

Although, surprisingly (to me at least -- again with no background in Lua),

function Link(link)
    return link.content:insert(pandoc.Note(link.target))
end

does not work.

[cagix]

the value of the insert operation is presumably not the new list ...

[tamas-ferenci]

Ah, of course! I should have realized it even without Lua knowledge... Thanks, it is clear now.

[tamas-ferenci]

I accepted your solution then as an answer!