# [texhax] Horizontal Footnotes in Critical Editions

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Thu Sep 8 10:59:07 CEST 2005

```> The overflow happens as soon as the \footnotesize \baselineskip
> exceeds 16 pt, while in standard LaTeX this doesn't exceed 12 pt.
> So are you preparing slides? I would also like to see your preamble.
>
> [This mainly addresses the package authors:]
> Maybe the relevant algorithm in manyfoot must be changed.
> Numerics (which is the manyfoot' author' profession) teach
> to multiply before dividing in order to minimize rounding errors,
> while it may be better to change this order in the present situation.
> Oh, a better idea would be to precede the multiplication by 1024
> with dividing by 8 (e.g.) and insert multiplication by 8
> immediately after dividing by \columnwidth (or replace 1024
> by 128 and 64 by 512). (This might be done on a `slides'
> option as well.)

actually, even that doesn't sort it in some cases.

i've recently corrected a similar bug report for footmisc by switching
to doing that calculation using the etex primitives if available.
(i.e., i've corrected for users of a modern distribution.  however,
the only way to make it totally robust is to go for arbitrary-length
calculations: someone _else_ is welcome to write efficient macros for
that, but i'm not going to dig into packages like fp ... numerical
analysis was my poorest subject in my final exam in 1968 ;-)

r

```