texinfo: Footnote Commands

Footnotes

Footnote Styles

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12.3.1 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 footnote
marker might end up starting a line.

  For example, this clause is followed by a sample footnote(1); in the
Texinfo source, it looks like this:

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

  As you can see, the source includes two punctuation marks next to each
other; in this case, '.};' is the sequence.  This is normal (the first
ends the footnote and the second belongs to the sentence being
footnoted), so don't worry that it looks odd.

  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)'.  The reference
mark is followed by a cross reference link to the footnote text if
footnotes are put in separate nodes (Note: Footnote Styles).

  In the HTML output, footnote references are generally marked with a
small, superscripted number which is rendered as a hypertext link to the
footnote text.

  By the way, footnotes in the argument of an '@item' command for an
'@table' must be on the same line as the '@item' (as usual).  Note:
Two-column Tables.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) Here is the sample footnote.