\footnote in table* environment

Question

I am using the SIG-Alternate.cls - Version 2.5 template for my document. I want to have a \footnote{...} in a table. Because my table is very big I use the table* environment. The footnote also needs to have no number or mark whatsoever. What I have tried:

\documentclass{sig-alternate}
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}}
\begin{document}
% some text here
\begin{table*}
  \begin{tabular}
    % actual table
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Some caption text}
\end{table*}\let\thefootnote\relax\footnote{$^*$The footnote text}
% some more text here
\end{document}

This results in having the footnote on the wrong page. Is there any way to make sure the footnote in on the same page as my 'whole page sized' table? I have another smaller table marked up in the same way, which is not on it's own page, but also with this table I am not able to have the footnote on the same page as the table.

If I put the \let\thefootnote\relax\footnote{$^*$The footnote text} in the tabular environment, then there is no footnote at all.

Answer 1

I suggest you load the threeparttable package, especially as it seems to be fully compatible with the sig-alternate document class. The package's purpose is to allow footnote material to stay with the tabular environment. The three parts of a threeparttable are \caption, the tabular (or tabular*, tabularx, etc) environment, and the tablenotes environment. The footnote marks can be almost anything you want, and footnote marks (say, an asterisk) can be repeated. A threeparttable environment should be encased in table or table* environment to make it "float" (in the LaTeX sense of the word, of course).

I would not recommend leaving off the footnote marks. However, it's entirely possible to do so. E.g., in the code below you'd leave off the \tnote{*} instructions inside the tabular environment and omit [*] after the first \item directive in the tablenotes environment.

\documentclass{sig-alternate}
\usepackage[flushleft]{threeparttable} % http://ctan.org/pkg/threeparttable
\usepackage{booktabs,caption}
\begin{document}
\begin{table*}
  \centering
  \caption{Tabular Material}
  \begin{threeparttable}
  \begin{tabular}{llll}
    \toprule
    123\tnote{*} & 456 & 789\tnote{*} & abc\tnote{a}\\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
  \begin{tablenotes}
  \item[*] The footnote text.
  \item[a] Another footnote.
  \end{tablenotes}
  \end{threeparttable}
\end{table*}
\end{document}