#81 latex2e: Allow footnotes to be more easily customizable

[Kirill Smelkov]

For example Russian GOST 19.106 requires that footnotes contain
footnote-number + ")" which in plain LaTeX could be done as

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\arabic{footnote})}
^
note ")"

but Docutils uses its own \DUfootnotemark and \DUfootnotetext macros
with hyperlinks setup which redefine \thefootnote in-there and the
above-shown tweak does not work.

So in order to make even small tweaks for foot notes, users have to
either "fork" \DUfootnotemark and \DUfootnotetext in their stylesheet,
or better, what I'm proposing here, just redefine here-introduced
\DUthefootnote, e.g. like this:

\providecommand*{\DUthefootnote}[1]{#1)}

Thanks,
Kirill

[Kirill Smelkov]

[Günter Milde]

Thanks for the patch. I am hesitant to commit it thoug:

The "righe way" to solve the footnotemark-customization prolem is proper support for LaTeX footnotes
via the \footnote command. This is on the TODO list <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/dev/todo.html#latex-constructs-and-packages-instead-of-re-implementations>.

The \DUfootnotemark and \DUfootnotetext commands are introduced to allow customization, so
changing them in the stylesheet is no "fork" but a valid use case. I agree that customization becomes
simpler in your special case, but at the cost of more overhead and complexity in every generated document.

I propose a "GOST.sty" stylesheet with adaptions for Russian documents in the sandbox stylesheet collection
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/sandbox/stylesheets/ instead.

[Kirill Smelkov]

Günter,

Initially I called changing \DUfootnotemark and \DUfootnotetext as "forking" becase they contain enough internal details (\raisebox, \hypertarget and \hyperlink, \protect, etc...) that copying it into own stylesheet copies a lot of details. Anyway, I see your point about proper support for footnotes via LaTeX's \footnote.

As to GOST.sty (or better ESPD.sty, because there are different GOSTs), I'd like to, but I'm afraid that unfortunately I can't do it - it was/is developed as part of my job, and recently managment became stricter on whether things could be shared.

I used some public domain sources with wishes of contributing back, so I'll try to ask again, but I'm afraid releasing what is ready up to the moment won't be possible.

On the other hand I would be glad to contribute my experience and knowledge to newly created ESPD.sty (as part of docutils or as a separate project) developed from scratch step-by-step in my spare time. Please let me know whether this is of interest to you.

Thanks for replying and sorry it took me so long to come back,
Kirill

P.S. ESPD GOSTs are available here:

http://www.finderx.ru/espd

(19.104 - for title page, 19.106 - for text, etc...)