Text Formatting ⇒ Format for short Footnotes

[Laurentius]

According to the Oxford Style Guide:

Short notes

One single-line note on a page should be centred; two or more single-line notes on a page should be ranged on the left, the whole being centred on the longest.

A short note may be set complete in the break-line of another note provided it is set ranged right, with more than 3 ems between the notes. Short notes may be run on in the same line with at least 3 ems between them, the line being centred. Where there are several short footnotes, they should be ranged in columns with a minimum of a 3em space between the longest lines in the columns. This avoids short notes being stacked into a 'chimney-pot' effect, which looks ugly and squanders space.

This is difficult to implement in (Xe)LaTeX. Any ideas?

[Laurentius]

I did this:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}

%% Footnotes
\def\footnoterule{}
\makeatletter
% thin space between mark and note:
	\def\@makefntext{\parindent 1em\noindent \hb@xt@ 1em{\hss \@makefnmark\,}}
\def\centerfootnote{\def\@makefntext{\hfil\parindent 1em\noindent \hb@xt@ 1em{\hss \@makefnmark\,}}}
\newcommand\cfootnote[1]{{\centerfootnote\footnote{#1}}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

Francis.\cfootnote{Farmer.}

\end{document}

But automating it is probably just complicated: I imagine one has to put all footnotes into boxes until next page, and then measure them. Maybe it's so complicated it's best to wait till the document is finished and then do it manually? I did a '[a] short note . . . in the break-line of another note' manually, but that was pretty cumbersome. One reason: I don't know how to move a box from further down in the document to further up.

I'm curious to know why the \hfil in \centernote, upon the effect of which I stumbled, centers it.