...which is still inferior, because it couples every footnote to every other footnote; if you add a footnote to the beginning you now have to go through and cha

...which is still inferior, because it couples every footnote to every other footnote; if you add a footnote to the beginning you now have to go through and change the numbers on every single one. That's not even considering the issues you'll run into if you want to break up the content into pages. Also, usefully displaying the footnote elsewhere on the page in a useful way is not a trivial task.