On Tue, May 10, 2005, Wartan Hachaturow wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I have discovered a very annoying "feature" of mom which I can't
> figure out how to fix.
> Suppose you have a situtation where a word with a footnote is immediately
> followed by a comma. As far as I understand, this is the way to do that:
> some word\c
> .FOOTNOTE
> This is a footnote.
> .FOOTNOTE OFF
> , and this is what follows a comma.
>
> However, such a code inserts a whitespace after a footnote mark,
> making the comma "hanging"
> between two whitespaces, which is just ugly.
> Is there any way to change that behaviour or am I just doing something wrong?
While designing the footnote routines for mom, I had to make a
judgment call, namely whether most users would prefer the footnote
markers in text before or after punctuation. The majority I polled
(admittedly, hardly a global sampling) preferred "after", so that's
the one I went with. The downside of my choice is the problem
you've encountered.
There are three solutions.
1. Place the footnote marker after the punctuation, as Larry Jones
suggested:
some word,\c
.FOOTNOTE
This is a footnote.
.FOOTNOTE OFF
and this is what follows a comma.
2. Place the footnote marker *above* the punctuation; where
this is feasible--obviously not with daggers--it's also
typographically desirable:
some word,\*[BCK \w','u]\c
.FOOTNOTE
This is a footnote.
.FOOTNOTE OFF
and this is what follows a comma.
The \*[BCK \w','u] bit says "back up the width of a comma",
effectively printing the marker above the comma.
For finer control of this effect (for example, to bring the
marker *closer* to the comma without actually printing it
*above* the comma, you can use \*[BCK <d>], where <d> is any
distance you like using the appropriate unit of measure (most
likely points, or fractions thereof). Alternatively, to
accomplish something similar, you can use \*[BU <n>], where <n>
is the desired number of kern units (see the documentation for
an explanation of kern units).
3. Place the footnote marker before the punctuation (producing
what I gather prefer):
some word\c
.FOOTNOTE
This is a footnote.
.FOOTNOTE OFF
\*[BCK "\w'\ 'u"], and this is what follows a comma.
Here, the \*[BCK ...] bit says: "back up the width of one
wordspace", which effectively removes the offending space
between the footnote marker and the comma.
If you need to use the \*[BCK ...] escapes often because of
footnotes, you might consider creating macros in your text editor
that insert them into the text.
And since I am just now in the midst of revising the documentation
section on footnotes, I will add instructions concerning the
problem. Good timing!
Cheers.
--
Peter Schaffter
Author of _The Schumann Proof_ (RendezVous Press, Canada)
http://faustus.dyn.ca
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