Re: [Groff] mom and footnote marks

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, May 10, 2005, Wartan Hachaturow wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I have discovered a very annoying "feature" of mom which I can't
> figure out how to fix.
> Suppose you have a situtation where a word with a footnote is immediately
> followed by a comma. As far as I understand, this is the way to do that:
> some word\c
> .FOOTNOTE
> This is a footnote.
> .FOOTNOTE OFF
> , and this is what follows a comma.
> 
> However, such a code inserts a whitespace after a footnote mark,
> making the comma "hanging"
> between two whitespaces, which is just ugly. 
> Is there any way to change that behaviour or am I just doing something wrong?

While designing the footnote routines for mom, I had to make a
judgment call, namely whether most users would prefer the footnote
markers in text before or after punctuation.  The majority I polled
(admittedly, hardly a global sampling) preferred "after", so that's
the one I went with.  The downside of my choice is the problem
you've encountered.

There are three solutions.

1.  Place the footnote marker after the punctuation, as Larry Jones
    suggested:

    some word,\c
    .FOOTNOTE
    This is a footnote.
    .FOOTNOTE OFF
    and this is what follows a comma.

2.  Place the footnote marker *above* the punctuation; where
    this is feasible--obviously not with daggers--it's also
    typographically desirable:

    some word,\*[BCK \w','u]\c
    .FOOTNOTE
    This is a footnote.
    .FOOTNOTE OFF
    and this is what follows a comma.

    The \*[BCK \w','u] bit says "back up the width of a comma",
    effectively printing the marker above the comma.

    For finer control of this effect (for example, to bring the
    marker *closer* to the comma without actually printing it
    *above* the comma, you can use \*[BCK <d>], where <d> is any
    distance you like using the appropriate unit of measure (most
    likely points, or fractions thereof).  Alternatively, to
    accomplish something similar, you can use \*[BU <n>], where <n>
    is the desired number of kern units (see the documentation for
    an explanation of kern units).

3.  Place the footnote marker before the punctuation (producing
    what I gather prefer):

    some word\c
    .FOOTNOTE
    This is a footnote.
    .FOOTNOTE OFF
    \*[BCK "\w'\ 'u"], and this is what follows a comma.

    Here, the \*[BCK ...] bit says: "back up the width of one
    wordspace", which effectively removes the offending space
    between the footnote marker and the comma.

If you need to use the \*[BCK ...] escapes often because of
footnotes, you might consider creating macros in your text editor
that insert them into the text.

And since I am just now in the midst of revising the documentation
section on footnotes, I will add instructions concerning the
problem.  Good timing!

Cheers.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
  Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
  http://faustus.dyn.ca