FOOTNOTES: THINGS WHICH COME AT THE BOTTOM

Everybody knows what a footnote is and you have already seen an example of a footnote appearing on page 5. Basically what a footnote macro has to do is attach a footnote mark to a specified word and then file away material to be put at the bottom of the page (in ten point type). The macro has to decide what to do if the footnote is too long, or if many footnotes appear on the same page. In addition, it has to decide what footnote mark to generate. PHYZZX has two macros which carry out this feat.

The first macro,
foot, has the syntax
foot{ text } where the text of the footnote is to be inserted between the braces. When you invoke this command immediately following the word to which you want to attach a footnote mark it does several things. First it generates the footnote mark and attaches it to the preceding word. If you are in the Nucl.Phys. format, this symbol will automatically be chosen from the set of symbols $\star$, †, *, ‡, $\natural$, $\diamond$, • and ∇. The macro will continually cycle through this table, according to a specified algorithm, in such a way that the same symbol will not (except in truly extraordinary circumstances) appear twice on a single page. If you are in PHYSREV mode, then the footnote mark will be a superscripted $\sharp$ sign followed by the current value of
number
footsymbolcount. This is a truly ugly convention, however it is included only to provide something for people who insist on numbering footnotes. Actually, Phys.Rev. does not like footnotes and preferes this material be included in with the references as endnotes.

Note, that as with references, the text of a footnote is indented using the TEX command
hangindent, hence to insert multi-paragraph footnotes one cannot use the
par command but must use instead the
subpar command. If you don't do this, but use
par (or equivalently insert a blank line) then TEX will, obligingly, turn off the
hangindent. This will, of course, mess up the footnote considerably.


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