Can I get a normal footnote in a minipage environment in LaTeX? How?

Question

I need to use a minipage environment and I need a footnote in that minipage. I want the footnote to be numbered in the normal footnote sequence and to occur together with the rest of the footnotes in my document. But, as this minimal example shows:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

Spam

\begin{minipage}{.5\linewidth}
    Foo\footnote{bar}
\end{minipage}

Ham

\end{document}

the obvious thing produces a footnote that 1) appears at the bottom of the minipage, and not the page itself, and 2) is "numbered" alphabetically.

How can I get a regular footnote in a minipage?

Answer 1

You should use the footnotemark and footnotetext commands to artificially insert the mark and text.

Modifying your MWE, we have

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Test\footnote{First footnote}

\begin{minipage}{.2\linewidth}
  Test with a bit more text to show that it really is a minipage\footnotemark

  Here is an internal footnote\footnote{Internal footnote}
\end{minipage}
\footnotetext{Second footnote}

Ham

\end{document}

which produces

Answer 2

It looks like that if you use the manyfoot package the footnotes are displayed at the bottom of the page:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{manyfoot}
\usepackage{lipsum}  

\DeclareNewFootnote{A}[arabic]
\DeclareNewFootnote{B}[alph]

\begin{document}
\subsection{Test section}

\begin{minipage}{0.8\textwidth}
This is text in a \texttt{minipage} environment. Here is the first \texttt{minipage} footnote\footnote{First minipage footnote.}. And another \texttt{minipage} footnote\footnote{Second minipage footnote.}.
Here\footnoteA{BOTTOM FOOT NOTE A} \footnoteB{BOTTOM FOOT NOTE B}
\end{minipage}
\\
\begin{minipage}{0.8\textwidth}
This is text in a \texttt{minipage} environment. Here is the first \texttt{minipage} footnote\footnote{First minipage footnote.}. And another \texttt{minipage} footnote\footnote{Second minipage footnote.}.
Here\footnoteA{BOTTOM FOOT NOTE C}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{10pt}

\end{document}