I have just been playing with this and thought my solution just might help somebody else at some point. I wanted the following:
table notes i.e. notes at the bottom of the tabular, within the table
environment - not at the bottom of the page;
automatic numbering of notes within the list of notes;
automatic numbering of note markers within the table itself;
numbering with small letters, to avoid any confusion with the Arabic numerals used to number footnotes and in the table and text to track content;
note markers in the list of notes to be left aligned with text in the first column of the tabular.
My solution involves an unholy mixture of
threeparttablex
with option referable
: this manages the automatic numbering of the note markers, on the basis of labels inserted into the list of notes;
enumitem
: to customise the list of notes.
This is a bit complex in terms of number of cooks responsible for the broth. To say that enumitem
is used to 'customise' the list is a bit misleading. Essentially, my solution redefines it. More specifically, threeparttable
provides tablenotes
. threeparttablex
redefines it and provides \tnotex{}
and some other enhancements. enumitem
is then used to redefine tablenotes
again.
Caveat emptor...
Anyway, for what it is worth:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem,booktabs,cfr-lm}
\usepackage[referable]{threeparttablex}
\renewlist{tablenotes}{enumerate}{1}
\makeatletter
\setlist[tablenotes]{label=\tnote{\alph*},ref=\alph*,itemsep=\z@,topsep=\z@skip,partopsep=\z@skip,parsep=\z@,itemindent=\z@,labelindent=\tabcolsep,labelsep=.2em,leftmargin=*,align=left,before={\footnotesize}}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\centering\tlstyle
\begin{threeparttable}
\begin{tabular}{lcccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{4}{c}{Great Value}\\
\cmidrule(lr){2-5}
Option & Robot 1 & Robot 2 & Robot 3 & Total\\
\midrule
Develop Robot 1 brilliant eye\tnotex{tnote:robots-r1}
& 5 & 78 & 54 & 56\\
Develop Robot 2 extended ears\tnotex{tnote:robots-r2}
& 24 & 87 & 42 & 23\\
Develop Robot 3 brilliant eye\tnotex{tnote:robots-r3}
& 0.5 & $\pi$ & 61 & $<19.3$\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\begin{tablenotes}
\item\label{tnote:robots-r1}That is, $360^\circ$ vision, as proposed by Noddy Norris.
\item\label{tnote:robots-r2}As recommended by \emph{Robot Review}.
\item\label{tnote:robots-r3}That is, X-Ray vision, as proposed by \emph{Mechanical Maniacs}.
\end{tablenotes}
\end{threeparttable}
\caption{\label{tab:robots}Total values of Jim's technological options for robot projects he thinks possible.}
\end{table}
\end{document}

threeparttable
orctable
. If you really want footnotes at the bottom of the page, outside the table, I'd just usetabularx
, if only because it looks like minimal effort among the options.