Can I redefine ednotes' \Bnote command to behave more like a normal \footnote?

Question

In the context of the scholarly apparatus package ednotes I would like to create a customized \Bnote which behaves like a normal LaTeX footnote; i.e., I would like to enter into the body of the text something like

blah blah.\Bnote{a}{This is the footnote text.} Blah blah blah...

And the footnote would appear below the \Anote layer and would look something like

^a This is the footnote text.

Within the ednotes.sty file there are a number of commands that can be modified to customize \Bnote, but I haven't been able to see how to get this behavior. Why, you ask, do I not just use the standard footnote utility? Because it comes out ABOVE the \Anote layer. Just to be clear, the default behavior in ednote that I am trying to override is using the line number as the footnote reference.

I am using LuaLaTeX and TeXShop.

Answer 1

I suspect that it is possible to create a hack that puts "normal" footnotes below the "apparatus" notes of ednotes. As I don't know how to do that, here's a second-best solution that

• removes the line numbers from and changes the mark format of \Bnote;

• defines a new macro \Bfootnote that tinkers with the footnote counter to produce (hopefully) correct automatic numbering of "apparatus B" notes.

---

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[Bplain]{ednotes}

\linenumbers

\newcommand{\Bnotefmt}{%
  \renewcommand*{\sameline}[1]{\linesfmt{##1}}%
  \renewcommand*{\differentlines}[2]{\linesfmt{##1\textendash##2}}%
%  \renewcommand*{\linesfmt}[1]{\textbf{##1}\enspace}% DELETED
  \renewcommand*{\linesfmt}[1]{}% NEW
  \renewcommand*{\pageandline}[2]{##1.##2}% ##1 page, ##2 line.
  \renewcommand*{\repeatref}[1]{##1}% E.g., ...
  \renewcommand*{\repeatref}[1]{\textnormal{/}}% ... instead.
%  \renewcommand{\lemmafmt}[1]{##1\thinspace]\enskip}% DELETED
  \renewcommand{\lemmafmt}[1]
      {\stepcounter{footnote}\textsuperscript{##1}\addtocounter{footnote}{-1}}% NEW
  \renewcommand{\lemmaellipsis}{\textsymmdots}%
  \renewcommand{\notefmt}[1]{##1}%
}

\newcommand*{\Bfootnote}[1]{%
  \addtocounter{footnote}{-1}%
  \Bnote{\footnotemark}{#1}%
}

\begin{document}

\null\vfill% just for the example

Some text \Anote{a}{An apparatus A note.}.

Some text.\Bfootnote{An apparatus B note that behaves like a normal footnote.}

Some text.\Bfootnote{And another one.}

\end{document}

Answer 2

In the meantime I (ednotes's author) have told by mail: ednotes uses manyfoot as "footnote engine". ednotes's setup of footnote layers uses manyfoot's setup to create layers of footnotes without footnote marks. To get the footnote marks "back", I think one should not try from within ednotes, better use manyfoot directly.

In the previous solution, I see the redefinition of \linesfmt. That is very right, some seconds before I had looked at the code and discovered it myself. Paul had discovered \lemmafmt before. That above solution really looks like that it should work; but manyfoot already offers a counter that should better be used directly.

Answer 3

Following up on Uwe's suggestion, here is another approach that produces the same output as lockstep's (though without the automatic counters):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{ednotes}

\linenumbers

\newfootnote{Z}
\newcommand\footnoteZ[2]{\Footnotemark{#1}\FootnotetextZ{}{#2}}

\begin{document}

\null\vfill% just for the example

Some text \Anote{a}{An apparatus A note.}.

Some text.\footnoteZ{1}{An apparatus B note that behaves like a normal footnote.}

Some text.\footnoteZ{2}{And another one.}

\end{document}

The \newfootnote{} command is part of the manyfoot package loaded by ednote.