Cite's visual editor support uses an unnecessarily complex method to wire each footnote number through a CSS variable, in order to accomplish explicit numbering. This could be replaced by a much simpler piece of direct HTML to accomplish the same rendering with better semantics and browser support.

Just to document the status quo, ve.ce.MWReferencesListNode.prototype.renderListItem includes the line:

$( '<li>' ).css( '--footnote-number', `"${ groupRefs.getIndexLabel( key ) }."` )

the stylesheet has:

.mw-references li::marker { content: var( --footnote-number ) ' '; }

The number should be emitted as plain HTML, but stylesheets will need to be adjusted to preserve the right-justified appearance of numbers. If possible, we might want to also rely on browser counting list styling as well! For example, in Myanmar numbers end with a symbol