[OS X TeX] footnoting in a tabular

[Alain Schremmer]

Hubris is always more expensive than even learning is: I started with 
the Companion2ed, then bought the Guide and now, on your recommendation 
and a more detached appreciation of my own capabilities, I will get the 
Lamport book.

  At first reading, I couldn't believe I needed \footnotemark and 
\footnotetext. (I missed the crucial last sentence in the 
"peculiarities" paragraph!) Hence my request. But after your post, I 
kept on reading the Companion and I am beginning to see the intricacies 
of Latex and to appreciate that the "minipage solution" was indeed a 
fairly "benign solution".

The "minipage with \footnotemark and \footnotetext solution" works fine 
for me as these tables are really only a local typographical 
re-arrangement of the body text and thus are short and absolutely not 
floating.

I should perhaps say a few words as to what I am up do: Currently, out 
of a thousand (1000) students registering in "Remedial Mathematics" 
(=Arithmetic) in U.S. two-year colleges, only one (1) ever passes 
Differential Calculus. I am trying to help bringing this ratio to ten 
percent (10%) by writing a proto-text (as opposed to a full-sized 
textbook complete and replete with examples, exercises, historical 
notes and other ancillaries). For this to have even a slight chance to 
happen, I will put it up on the web under an Open Doc license for other 
people to turn it into textbooks and/or other materials. Hence the 
necessity to convert from MS Word/rtf to TeX what I already have, about 
half. But I still have to assemble-rewrite the other half from stuff I 
have written over the many years.

Up to fairly recently, just converting, bit by bit, was all I could do. 
But now I want to play with the typographical arrangements because this 
type of students  (very numerous) is quite unable to read solid 
paragraphs. So I am also inTeXing as an opportunity to bring both the 
writing and the format closer to what these students can handle.

Thus, I still need ALL the help I can get.

So, thanks for the help.
Regards
--schremmer


On Jul 11, 2004, at 6:23 AM, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> On 11 jul 2004, at 7:01, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
>> Neither or them came outright saying, as the FAQ (which I have now 
>> bookmarked) does,
>> 	The standard LaTeX \footnote command doesn't work in tables; the 
>> table traps the footnotes and they can't escape to the bottom of the 
>> page.
>
> Ah, but that is even less trivial, as footnotes for tables, at least 
> in physics and probably mathematics as well, are traditionally put at 
> the bottom of the table, and use alphabetical markers, not the main 
> footnote marker. If you want them as part of the main footnote 
> mechanism, one of the packages may offer that (mdwtools or footmisc is 
> where I would start looking, see that FAQ entry for more details).
>
>> and the minipage solution seemed a bit of an overkill …
>
> That is a fairly benign solution, but it keeps the footnote with the 
> table, it doesn't insert them into the main footnote list. You didn't 
> mention if the tabular is embedded into a table environment, which 
> makes thing even harder (that is why the longtable solution can be 
> easier). You might try to play with \footnotemark (which places the 
> label) and \footnotetext{} which produces the entry, numbered with the 
> current footnote number. See page 173 of the Lamport Book (the book 
> that _is_ light reading, and is recommended to get started. It already 
> answers a fair number of your questions).
>
> Maarten
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