Re: Footnotes in footnotes

[Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>]

Hans Hagen wrote:

> \footnotemark
> \footnotetext
> 
> the most natural names for this?

Here is what I think is the most sensible approach, based on current
context behaviour, which is:

\footnote does three things:

1. typeset a reference in the text
2. typeset the number in front of the footnote
3. typeset the footnote text

Parts 2 and 3 are done by one macro (\dostartfootnote), and it is
currently not possible to change
that behaviour. 

\note does only the first thing:

1. typeset a reference in the text 

LaTeX's \footnotemark/\footnotetext uses a somewhat different approach.

Proposed extension:

a) Make a new user command \footnotetext, that only does 2. and 3.

   \footnote then basically becomes
\def\footnote[#1]#2{\footnotetext[#1]{#2}\note[#1]}
   This allows 'non-marking' footnotes to appear at the bottom of the
page.

b) Add an option to suppress the footnote marker and/or indentation in
front of the 
   footnote's text. This allows 'global' footnotes that don't need a
symbol.

   (but keep the internal reference, just make it expand to nothing. I'd
like to
    be able to do: "see the footnote on page xxx". Only typesetting is
disabled
    by this option).

   The cleanest way (IMO) of implementing this is to split \footnotetext
in a part that
   typeset 2. and a part that typesets 3.

I hope this is clear enough.

-- 
groeten,

Taco