Page Layout ⇒ Nested footnotes

[user001]

Hallo. I had an issue with correct numbering of nested footnotes in LaTeX, such as shown below:

footnote_misnumbering.png (13.79 KiB) Viewed 3509 times

This issue was resolved, but only in a manner which conflicted with the hyperref package. This conflict is shown in the below examples.

First is the desired pdflatex output:

MWE_Comment.png (12.12 KiB) Viewed 3509 times

And second is the actual output:

MWE_noComment.png (12.39 KiB) Viewed 3509 times

These outputs were generated from the following code without (top output) or with (bottom output) inclusion of the hyperref package.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

% comment the below line to resolve the footnote numbering problem
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,urlcolor=red,hyperfootnotes=false]{hyperref}

% solution proposed by Werner (begin)
\usepackage{letltxmacro}
\newcounter{fnmarkcntr}\newcounter{fntextcntr}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\footnotemark}{%
   \@ifnextchar[\@xfootnotemark
     {\stepcounter{fnmarkcntr}%
      \refstepcounter{footnote}\label{footnotemark\thefnmarkcntr}%
      \protected@xdef\@thefnmark{\thefootnote}%
      \@footnotemark}}
\makeatother
\LetLtxMacro{\oldfootnotetext}{\footnotetext}
\renewcommand{\footnotetext}[1]{%
  \stepcounter{fntextcntr}%
  \oldfootnotetext[\ref{footnotemark\thefntextcntr}]{#1}
}
% solution proposed by Werner (end)

\begin{document}
This text has a footnote\footnote%
{Which contains a sub-footnote\footnotemark}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `2'}
\end{document}

Could someone please help me to generate the desired output in a manner that is compatible with the hyperref package? Thank you very much.

[kaiserkarl13]

The "solution" you posted seems unnecessary. I get your example to work just fine without the extra packages and redefinitions. Observe:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

% comment the below line to resolve the footnote numbering problem
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,urlcolor=red,hyperfootnotes=false]{hyperref}

\begin{document}
This text has a footnote\footnote%
{Which contains a sub-footnote\protect\footnotemark}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `2'}
\end{document}

On my machine, it works fine. You might be having issues with minipages: the minipage environment redefines \thefootnote inside so it uses a, b, c, and uses mpfootnote instead of footnote for numbering. This means \footnotemark (which is not similarly redefined) won't have the correct default numbering. You can specify the number like this: \footnotemark[2] ... \footnotetext[2]{Text.}.

Incidentally, your original code doesn't process either unless you ignore the errors. Once the .aux file has been generated, it seems fine, but until then it looks for a non-existent number. So perhaps the moral of this post should be, "don't ignore errors!"

[user001]

Sorry, in the interest of posting a succinct MWE, I realize now that I made it too simple.

If you add a second footnote mark as below, the numbering won't work without the posted solution:

Code: Select all

\begin{document}
This text has a footnote\footnote%
{Which contains two sub-footnote\footnotemark\footnotemark}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `2'}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `3'}
\end{document}

[kaiserkarl13]

You have to give LaTeX some help---you give it two \footnotetext commands in a row, so it uses the current value of the footnote counter when generating numbers. This will work for your example:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

% comment the below line to resolve the footnote numbering problem
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,urlcolor=red,hyperfootnotes=true]{hyperref}

\begin{document}
This text has a footnote\footnote%
{Here is a footnote within the footnote\footnotemark.  And here is another
one.\footnotemark}
\footnotetext[2]{This footnote should be labeled `2'}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `3'}
\end{document}

A slightly more robust way is like this:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

% comment the below line to resolve the footnote numbering problem
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,urlcolor=red,hyperfootnotes=true]{hyperref}
\newcounter{prevfn}

\begin{document}
This text has a footnote\footnote%
{Here is a footnote within the footnote\footnotemark.  And here is another
one.\footnotemark}
\setcounter{prevfn}{\value{footnote}}
\addtocounter{prevfn}{-1}
\footnotetext[\value{prevfn}]{This footnote should be labeled `2'}
\footnotetext{This footnote should be labeled `3'}
\end{document}

I say "slightly" because it still requires you to know how many nested footnotes you have. It does not, however, require you to know the value off-hand.