ngs@sunkst.cs.duke.edu (Neil G. Sullivan) (07/24/90)
I would like to mark a footnote in LaTeX with something other than a number. I cannot find help in the manual, and nothing I have tried has worked. The footnotemark and footnotetext commands appear to be no help, as footnotetext always seems to generate a number to precede the footnote at the bottom of the page. I realize that I can create a footnote reference trivially in the text. It is the character preceding the actual footnote at the bottom of the page that presents the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Neil G. Sullivan Dept of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706 ngs@cs.duke.edu
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (07/24/90)
In article <20968@duke.cs.duke.edu>, ngs@sunkst.cs.duke.edu (Neil G. Sullivan) writes... >I would like to mark a footnote in LaTeX with something other than a >number. I cannot find help in the manual, and nothing I have tried >has worked. The footnotemark and footnotetext commands appear to be >no help, as footnotetext always seems to generate a number to precede >the footnote at the bottom of the page. First of all, since this is a minor stylistic change, you should put the commands involved in the preamble (between \documentstyle and \begin{document} of your document (this is to make it easy to find when you need to change it back). Now, for all automatically numbered items in a LaTeX document, there is an associated counter whose name is usually the name of the command or environment which generated the number sans the backslash. Thus the section number is stored in the counter section and the footnote number is stored in the counter footnote. Associated with each counter is a command \the<countername> which is responsible for printing the value of the counter. For example, the command to print the footnote numbeer is \thefootnote. p. 175 of the LaTeX manual lists the numbering commands supported by LaTeX; these commands are generally used only in the definition of a \the<something> command. For example, \thesection is defined as \arabic{section}, \thesubsection is defined as \thesection.\arabic{subsection} (do you understand why?) and so forth. To change the way that footnotes are renumbered, one simply redefines \thefootnote: The following will change footnotes to be numbered with "footnote symbols": \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}} Exercise: change the definition of \footnote so that footnotes are numbered with lower case letters. Exercise for wizards: write the macros to allow footnotes to be numbered with lower case GREEK letters (you'll need to write a macro \greek with a syntax similar to that of the numbering commands of p. 175). -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates. dhosek@ymir.bitnet uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147
rar@kronos.ads.com (Bob Riemenschneider) (07/24/90)
=> From: dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.)
=> Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
=>
=> ... To change the way that footnotes are renumbered, one simply
=> redefines \thefootnote: The following will change footnotes to be
=> numbered with "footnote symbols":
=> \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
=> ...
For a standard "footnote symbol" style, you need
\@addtoreset{footnote}{page}
as well. (If you're using letters, you can be a bit more liberal. But,
for large documents, you'll have to do something about resetting footnote
every once in awhile.)
-- rardhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (07/24/90)
In article <9007232104.AA05987@kronos.ads.com>, rar@kronos.ads.com (Bob Riemenschneider) writes...
)=) From: dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.)
)=) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
)=) ... To change the way that footnotes are renumbered, one simply
)=) redefines \thefootnote: The following will change footnotes to be
)=) numbered with "footnote symbols":
)=) \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
)=) ...
)For a standard "footnote symbol" style, you need
) \@addtoreset{footnote}{page}
)as well. (If you're using letters, you can be a bit more liberal. But,
)for large documents, you'll have to do something about resetting footnote
)every once in awhile.)
Unfortunately this won't work. Because of the way TeX breaks
pages, chances are you'll get mis-"numbered" footnotes at the
tops of pages (since the number will be assigned before the
"scroll is cut"). The only accurate solution involves a two-pass
algorithim in which on the first pass, LaTeX keeps track of which
footnotes are on which pages and on the second pass makes sure
that footnotes are numbered correctly for that page.
---
Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and
dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates.
dhosek@ymir.bitnet
uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147