Remove affiliation from author

Question

I am using the authblk package on a modified LaTeX report class and I require to show the author as a footnote on every page, without affiliations (still showing the affiliations on the title page). the problem is that when I use the \@authorcommand on my modified class, it shows the author with the affiliation indexes. Is there any way to remove it?

Class Code:

\ProvidesClass{ThesisClass}
\LoadClass[twoside,11pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[noblocks]{authblk}                                  
% redefine \author command
\def\@author{}
\renewcommand\@author{\ifx\AB@affillist\AB@empty\AB@author\else
      \ifnum\value{affil}>\value{Maxaffil}\def\rlap##1{##1}%
    \AB@authlist\\
    \else  \AB@authors\fi\fi}

% Define \institutes command    
\def\@institutes{}
\renewcommand\@institutes{\AB@affillist}
%   HEADERS AND FOOTERS
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
    \fancyfoot{} 
\fancyfoot[R]{\@author}

One of the reasons I defined a \institutes command is to be able to setup a \supervisors command that can share the affiliations with the authors.

Answer 1

The entire list of authors is stored in \AB@authlist, while the superscripted affiliations are provided by \textsuperscript (note the trailing space!). As such, you can use \printauthorlist:

\newcommand{\printauthorlist}{{%
  \expandafter\let\csname textsuperscript \endcsname\@gobble% Remove \textsuperscript 
  \AB@authlist}% Print list
}

It temporarily sets \textsuperscript to \@gobble, which just gobbles its argument (thereby removing the superscripted notation).

Here's a complete MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[noblocks]{authblk}% http://ctan.org/pkg/authblk
\usepackage{fancyhdr}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fancyhdr
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\printauthorlist}{{%
  \expandafter\let\csname textsuperscript \endcsname\@gobble% Remove \textsuperscript 
  \AB@authlist}% Print list
}
% Define \institutes command    
\def\@institutes{}
\renewcommand\@institutes{\AB@affillist}
%   HEADERS AND FOOTERS
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}% No header rule
\fancyfoot{}% Clear footer
\fancyfoot[R]{\printauthorlist}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\makeatother
\title{Title}
\author{author1}\author{author2}\affil{affil1}
\author{author3}\author{author4}\affil{affil2}
\begin{document}
\maketitle\thispagestyle{fancy}

This is some text.
\end{document}

You are required to use \csname textsuperscript \endcsname in order to capture the trailing space in the control sequence definition.

Answer 2

OK, found a solution, not sure if most correct and still do not understand why this works...

I replaced

\fancyfoot[R]{\@author}

with

\fancyfoot[R]{\AB@author}