Footnote placement problems

Footnote placement problems

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Hello,

sometimes, especially when using *lots* of footnotes, some problems happen;
mostly

(a) footnote text goes on the wrong page (next);
(b) text overwrites footnotes;

I believe that in such cases, rather than letting these things happen, ConTeXt
should try as hard as possible to prevent them, even at the cost of heavily
underfull pages (signaled) [from my poor debugging I belive (b) happens when
ConTeXt attemps an *overfull* page to prevent (a)]. I know that footnote
handling is *extremely* difficult, but I think these problems should be issued
as best as possible.

While browsing throught the core-not.tex code I found the reference to
\footnotelimit; if I understood correctly what it means, this should be set to
*false* to solve the two problems, when they arise. Am I correct?

Giuseppe Bilotta

Using Microsoft products is like
having sex without condoms---but
much less pleasurable

Re: Footnote placement problems

[Hans Hagen]

At 04:14 PM 2/4/01 +0100, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
>Hello,
>
>sometimes, especially when using *lots* of footnotes, some problems happen;
>mostly
>
>(a) footnote text goes on the wrong page (next);
>(b) text overwrites footnotes;
>
>I believe that in such cases, rather than letting these things happen,
ConTeXt
>should try as hard as possible to prevent them, even at the cost of heavily
>underfull pages (signaled) [from my poor debugging I belive (b) happens when
>ConTeXt attemps an *overfull* page to prevent (a)]. I know that footnote
>handling is *extremely* difficult, but I think these problems should be
issued
>as best as possible.
>
>While browsing throught the core-not.tex code I found the reference to
>\footnotelimit; if I understood correctly what it means, this should be
set to
>*false* to solve the two problems, when they arise. Am I correct?

I'm working on some new otr macros, so part of it can be covered. The
problem with 'moving' footnotes is partly due to the fact that deeply
burried footnotes are not seen by tex and thereby are not taken into
account by page break calculations. So, postponed notes are dangerous ones,
which is why in for instance tables, i use local notes and attach them to
the table (or fig). 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Footnote placement problems

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Well, I must say that (b) [text on notes] happens in normal cases (no nested
footnotes, no notes in objects, etc); (a) doesn't actually happen very often,
but I recently had (b) happening (solved by putting a \page[preference] before a
heading, thus moving heading and following text to next page).

Giuseppe Bilotta

Using Microsoft products is like
having sex without condoms---but
much less pleasurable

----- Original Message -----
From: Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>
To: Giuseppe Bilotta <oblomov@freemail.it>
Cc: ConTeXt <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: Footnote placement problems

> At 04:14 PM 2/4/01 +0100, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >sometimes, especially when using *lots* of footnotes, some problems happen;
> >mostly
> >
> >(a) footnote text goes on the wrong page (next);
> >(b) text overwrites footnotes;
> >
> >I believe that in such cases, rather than letting these things happen,
> ConTeXt
> >should try as hard as possible to prevent them, even at the cost of heavily
> >underfull pages (signaled) [from my poor debugging I belive (b) happens when
> >ConTeXt attemps an *overfull* page to prevent (a)]. I know that footnote
> >handling is *extremely* difficult, but I think these problems should be
> issued
> >as best as possible.
> >
> >While browsing throught the core-not.tex code I found the reference to
> >\footnotelimit; if I understood correctly what it means, this should be
> set to
> >*false* to solve the two problems, when they arise. Am I correct?
>
> I'm working on some new otr macros, so part of it can be covered. The
> problem with 'moving' footnotes is partly due to the fact that deeply
> burried footnotes are not seen by tex and thereby are not taken into
> account by page break calculations. So, postponed notes are dangerous ones,
> which is why in for instance tables, i use local notes and attach them to
> the table (or fig).
>
> Hans
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
>                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>