texinfo: Footnote Styles

Footnotes

Footnote Commands

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12.3.2 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 the Info output for 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 with 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) The first syllable of "Texinfo" is pronounced like "speck", not
          "hex". ...

  Unless your document has long and important footnotes (as in, say,
Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall ...'), we recommend the 'end' style, as it is
simpler for readers to follow.

  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
or
     @footnotestyle separate

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

  In HTML, when the footnote style is 'end', or if the output is not
split, footnotes are put at the end of the output.  If set to
'separate', and the output is split, they are placed in a separate file.