Footnotes and org-export

[mdl@imapmail.org]

First, let me say thank you to Carsten and everyone else for this
wonderful note-taking/PIM/spreadsheet/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink
software. It is one of the best computer tools I've ever used. As an
Emacs neophyte, I remained humbled by the generosity of those with far
superior computer skills.

I am an academic and I use LaTeX footnotes extensively in my writing.
I'd like to be able to write my drafts in org-mode and then export
them both to HTML and LaTeX. The problem is that the emacs footnote
mode is not very robust (being designed for emails with one or two
footnotes). Trying to add more than a handful of footnotes to a
document with footnote.el quickly becomes a nightmare (ordering gets
broken, the count gets messed up, etc.)

And now for the question (which will betray my ignorance about emacs
lisp). How complicated would it be to write a function for org-export
that would transform the LaTeX markup for footnotes (i.e.,
\footnote{text}) into hyperref footnotes? I'd like to be able to enter
the LaTeX footnote markup directly in my org file and then export it
to html.[1]

Or, if this wouldn't work, how complicated would it be to create a
different footnote markup altogether for org-export? One possibility,
I imagine, would be a footnote markup with unique labels for each
footnote, such as:
     
     Here is a sentence with a footnote.[fn:label]
     
     ...

     [fn id=label] And here is the footnote.
     
This latter option would allow for the arbitrary placement of
footnotes in html documents.
     
Thanks for your suggestions!

----

Matthew Lundin
mdl at imapmail dot org

----

[1] I've checked the mailing lists and documentation, and as far as I
can tell, \footnote is not one of the embedded LaTeX macros that org
recognizes. Please do correct me if I am wrong.