I just want to point out that in my example, I was not calculating sequence numbers; those were part of the data (biblical chapter/verse data). What I was hard-coding—because I found no algorithm for calculating them—were the vertical offsets for placing those sequence numbers approximately adjacent to the related content. “Approximately” is necessary here because it’s quite possible that more than one verse will begin on the same line in the paragraph.
For arbitrary-sized notes, there would be an additional consideration, as @Springer and @TW_Tones have already mentioned, about the size of the notes themselves: whether a long note would push down succeeding main content to appear after the note. Together, these points add up to a lot of complexity in the problem.
That’s certainly an approach I hadn’t considered at all! I can’t think of a way to make it work, but it’s definitely worth some more thought.
I worry more about the opposite side, that of premature generalization. I have to work hard to avoid that one, myself. The rule I try to stick to is that I will do something once, then a second time, and only on the third variant would I try hard to abstract the problem and solution into their commonalities. But I do have three separate problems of my own that I would now like to generalize:
- Cornell Notes
- Bible Verse Numbers
- Side notes in my SQL Playground (which perhaps can be lumped together with Cornell Notes)
And others here and elsewhere have similar needs. So I would absolutely love to see or to jointly develop a general solution for this. I don’t have any great ideas, though, except for extending the Cornell Notes ideas.
Oh, is that what it’s for? I thought it was just a bigger target for food stains.