docling-project/docling

Improved Footnote Serialization in `MarkdownDocSerializer`

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#3128 opened on Mar 14, 2026

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 (13 comments) (0 reactions) (1 assignee)Python (59,751 stars) (4,140 forks)batch import
docling-documentenhancementgood first issue

Description

Requested feature

Currently, footnotes are serialized as part of MarkdownDocSerializer more or less as-is:

Serialized as:

5 https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract

6 https://github.com/VikParuchuri/surya

7 https://github.com/lukas-blecher/LaTeX-OCR

Alternatives

For downstream LLM-based applications it would be helpful if footnotes were serialized as actual footnotes in Markdown Syntax for the LLM to indentify them as footnotes (and not as a numbered list, for example).

^[5 https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract]

^[6 https://github.com/VikParuchuri/surya]

^[7 https://github.com/lukas-blecher/LaTeX-OCR]

Contributor guide

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
PythonMarkdown syntaxdocling codebase basics
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
65
Research direction
Examine the MarkdownDocSerializer class in the docling codebase, specifically the method handling footnote serialization. Review the current serialization logic versus the desired Markdown footnote syntax. Check any discussion in the comments for alternative approaches or maintainer feedback. Implement the change to produce footnotes using the ^[] format.