16. Footnotes

A footnote is for a reference that documents or elucidates the primary text.(9)

16.1 Footnote Commands

In Texinfo, footnotes are created with the @footnote command. This command is followed immediately by a left brace, then by the text of the footnote, and then by a terminating right brace. Footnotes may be of any length (they will be broken across pages if necessary), but are usually short. The template is:

ordinary text@footnote{text of footnote}

As shown here, the @footnote command should come right after the text being footnoted, with no intervening space; otherwise, the formatters the footnote mark might end up starting up a line.

For example, this clause is followed by a sample footnote(10); in the Texinfo source, it looks like this:

...a sample footnote@footnote{Here is the sample
footnote.}; in the Texinfo source...

Warning: Don't use footnotes in the argument of the @item command for a @table table. This doesn't work, and because of limitations of TeX, there is no way to fix it. You must put the footnote into the body text of the table.

In a printed manual or book, the reference mark for a footnote is a small, superscripted number; the text of the footnote appears at the bottom of the page, below a horizontal line.

In Info, the reference mark for a footnote is a pair of parentheses with the footnote number between them, like this: `(1)'.

16.2 Footnote Styles

Info has two footnote styles, which determine where the text of the footnote is located:

• In the `End' node style, all the footnotes for a single node are placed at the end of that node. The footnotes are separated from the rest of the node by a line of dashes with the word `Footnotes' within it. Each footnote begins with an `(n)' reference mark.

  Here is an example of a single footnote in the end of node style:

  --------- Footnotes --------- (1) Here is a sample footnote.

• In the `Separate' node style, all the footnotes for a single node are placed in an automatically constructed node of their own. In this style, a "footnote reference" follows each `(n)' reference mark in the body of the node. The footnote reference is actually a cross reference which you use to reach the footnote node.

  The name of the node containing the footnotes is constructed by appending `-Footnotes' to the name of the node that contains the footnotes. (Consequently, the footnotes' node for the `Footnotes' node is `Footnotes-Footnotes'!) The footnotes' node has an `Up' node pointer that leads back to its parent node.

  Here is how the first footnote in this manual looks after being formatted for Info in the separate node style:

  File: texinfo.info Node: Overview-Footnotes, Up: Overview (1) Note that the first syllable of "Texinfo" is pronounced like "speck", not "hex". ...

A Texinfo file may be formatted into an Info file with either footnote style.

Use the @footnotestyle command to specify an Info file's footnote style. Write this command at the beginning of a line followed by an argument, either `end' for the end node style or `separate' for the separate node style.

For example,

@footnotestyle end

@footnotestyle separate

Write an @footnotestyle command before or shortly after the end-of-header line at the beginning of a Texinfo file. (If you include the @footnotestyle command between the start-of-header and end-of-header lines, the region formatting commands will format footnotes as specified.)

If you do not specify a footnote style, the formatting commands use their default style. Currently, texinfo-format-buffer and texinfo-format-region use the `separate' style and makeinfo uses the `end' style.

This chapter contains two footnotes.