[OS X TeX] footnote with asterisk

[Kentaro Nakatani]

Dear All:

I'm sorry that this topic is not necessarily related to Mac OS X,
but I have a question for which I can't find an answer.
In a paper, it is common to have the first footnote containing
acknowledgments marked with an asterisk...but how can
I do it in LaTeX?  Lamport book says in using \footnote[num]{text},
num should be a positive integer, 'even when footnotes are
"numbered" with letters or other symbols'.  But I don't see
how to number the footnotes with letters or symbols.
My best guess is, this could be achieved by "\fnsymbol{footnote}"
command...but it seems this command only produces symbols,
rather than replacing the footnote counters.

So when I tried a command like this:
=============
\LARGE
\textbf{Title of the Paper \fnsymbol{footnote}\footnote{ 
\fnsymbol{footnote}
I'm indebted to blah blah blah.}}
  =============
there were regular footnote counters AND asterisks at the same time.
If I use \footnotetext instead of \footnote, there will still be an 
unwanted
numerical counter remaining.

Could anybody help me with this problem?
Thank you.

-Ken N.


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