[comp.text.tex] I think this is a bug in LaTeX

braams@pttrnl.nl (Johannes L. Braams) (05/30/91)

	Today we stumbled upon a LaTeX 'feature' that I would call a bug.

	A user wanted to have multiple occurences of the same footnotemark
	in a tabular environment. To accomplish this he put the tabular
	environment inside a minipage. So far so good. To his (and mine)
	astonishment the footnotemarks (created with eg \footnotemark[1])
	appeared in the table as arabic numerals, while the marks that 
	go with the footnotetext appeared as lowercase letters.
	Digging into:

% LATEX VERSION 2.09 <7 Dec 1989>
% Copyright (C) 1988 by Leslie Lamport

	revealed the following defintion for \footnotemark and its companion
	\@xfootnotemark:

\def\footnotemark{\@ifnextchar[{\@xfootnotemark
    }{\stepcounter{footnote}\xdef\@thefnmark{\thefootnote}\@footnotemark}}

\def\@xfootnotemark[#1]{\begingroup \c@footnote #1\relax
   \xdef\@thefnmark{\thefootnote}\endgroup \@footnotemark}

	which means both macros always use the footnote counter, whereas
	other footnote-macros use the mpfoutnote counter inside a minipage
	environment.

	To cure this behaviour I put

%+
%     This repairs a bug in LaTeX.tex, where the \footnotemark
%     uses \thefootnote instead of \thmpfn
%-
\def\footnotemark{\@ifnextchar[{\@xfootnotemark
    }{\stepcounter{footnote}\xdef\@thefnmark{\thempfn}\@footnotemark}}

\def\@xfootnotemark[#1]{\begingroup \csname c@\@mpfn\endcsname #1\relax
   \xdef\@thefnmark{\thempfn}\endgroup \@footnotemark}

	in a style file.

    Regards,

	Johannes Braams

PTT Research Neher Laboratorium,        P.O. box 421,
2260 AK Leidschendam,                   The Netherlands.
Phone    : +31 70 3325051               E-mail : JL_Braams@pttrnl.nl
Fax      : +31 70 3326477
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	Johannes Braams

PTT Research Neher Laboratorium,        P.O. box 421,
2260 AK Leidschendam,                   The Netherlands.
Phone    : +31 70 3325051               E-mail : JL_Braams@pttrnl.nl
Fax      : +31 70 3326477
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