Customising footnote marks with reledmac

Question

In the manual of reledmac there are, on page 32, subsubsection 6.5.2, some remarks about customising the footnote marks of familiar footnotes, but it seems to me not clear how to use this instruction to achieve a different appearance of the footnote marks.

Does anyone know something about this matter?

I would like to put an Arabic text facing its translation into German, thereby using two layers of familiar footnotes, one referring to the translation and the other to the original text. The footnotes referring to the LTR text are LTR and those referring to the RTL text are RTL.

Now, I would like to have the first layer, \footnoteA, with footnote marks in Arabic numerals and brackets around, and the second layer, \footnoteB, with alphabetic characters in Arabic and also brackets around.

I have tried a kind of "solution" which at least puts brackets around the alphabetic footnote marks in the \footnoteB layer at the bottom of the page, but the remaining features I could not achieve.

This is a MWE

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,twoside]{article}
\usepackage{polyglossiasetspace}
\usepackage[series={A,B},nocritical,noend]{reledmac}
\usepackage{reledpar}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
 \setmainlanguage[spelling=old,babelshorthands=true]{german}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text,Renderer=ICU]{Charis SIL}

\setotherlanguage{english}
\newfontfamily\englishfont[Mapping=tex-text,Renderer=ICU]{Charis SIL}

\setotherlanguage{arabic}
\newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic,Scale=1.4]{Scheherazade}

\linenumincrement*{2}
\firstlinenum*{1}
\setlength{\Lcolwidth}{0.5\textwidth}
\setlength{\Rcolwidth}{0.4\textwidth} 

\newcommand{
\فب
}[1]{\footnoteB{\hspace{1ex}#1}}

%\renewcommand*{\thefootnoteB}{\alph{footnoteB}}

\bhooknoteX{\renewcommand{\thefootnoteB}{\textarabic{(\alph{footnoteB})}}}
%\bhooknoteX{\renewcommand{\bodyfootmarkB}{\textarabic{(\alph{footnoteB})}}}

\begin{document}

%\numberlinefalse

\AtBeginPairs{\sloppy}
\begin{pairs}

\begin{Rightside} 
\begin{RTL}
\begin{Arabic}
\begin{spacing}{2}
\beginnumbering
\pstart
نحمدك اللهمّ على نعم يؤذن الحمد بازديادها، ونصلي على نبيك محمد هادي الأمة\فب{يعني أمة محمد.} لرشادها
\pend    
\endnumbering
\end{spacing}
\end{Arabic}
\end{RTL}
\end{Rightside}

\begin{Leftside} 
\begin{german}
\beginnumbering
\pstart
\noindent
Wir preisen dich, Gott, für Gnadengaben, deren Lobpreis von ihrem\footnoteA{\hspace{1ex}D.h. der Gnadengaben} Anwachsen kündet, und wir bitten um Segen für deinen Propheten Muḥammad, der die Gemeinde auf den rechten Weg führt.
\pend
\endnumbering
\end{german}
\end{Leftside}
\end{pairs}
\Columns

\end{document}

Answer 1

Thank, the new formulation of your question is clearer than the first one.

However, the code your provided is not useful, as it not a MWE, which is ready to run (there is no documentclass, and some package loading are missing). Please read this topic: https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3225/7712.

However, I was able to recreate a MWE. So I can answer to your question.

You tried to use \bhooknoteX, which is not the direct way to get you result, and which seems to pertubate (I don't know exactly why, it is maybe a bug of reledmac) the character/typesetting detection.

The handbook explained you, however, that is was possible to directly modify the footnotemark inside the footnote text, by redefining \footfootmarkA (and \footfootmarkB). That will also be useful to automatically insert your hspace, and not insert it manually.

As this manipulate command with arobase inside, you must use \makeateletter…\makeatother structure.

Here the code to put in your preamble:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\footfootmarkA}{(\textsuperscript{\@thefnmarkA})\hspace{1ex}}
\renewcommand{\footfootmarkB}{\textarabic{(\textsuperscript{\@thefnmarkB})}\hspace{1ex}}
\makeatother

And here, the full MWE, with the correction of you'r "wrong" code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage[noend,noeledsec]{reledmac}
\usepackage{reledpar}
\usepackage{polyglossia}

\setmainlanguage[spelling=old,babelshorthands=true]{german}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text,Renderer=ICU]{Charis SIL}

\setotherlanguage{english}
\newfontfamily\englishfont[Mapping=tex-text,Renderer=ICU]{Charis SIL}

\setotherlanguage{arabic}
\newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic,Scale=1.4]{Scheherazade}

\linenumincrement*{2}
\firstlinenum*{1}
\setlength{\Lcolwidth}{0.5\textwidth}
\setlength{\Rcolwidth}{0.4\textwidth} 

\newcommand{
\فب
}[1]{\footnoteB{#1}}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\footfootmarkA}{(\textsuperscript{\@thefnmarkA})\hspace{1ex}}
\renewcommand{\footfootmarkB}{\textarabic{(\textsuperscript{\@thefnmarkB})}\hspace{1ex}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

%\numberlinefalse

\AtBeginPairs{\sloppy}
\begin{pairs}

\begin{Rightside} 
\begin{RTL}
\begin{Arabic}
\begin{spacing}{2}
\beginnumbering
\pstart
نحمدك اللهمّ على نعم يؤذن الحمد بازديادها، ونصلي على نبيك محمد هادي الأمة\فب{يعني أمة محمد.} لرشادها
\pend    
\endnumbering
\end{spacing}
\end{Arabic}
\end{RTL}
\end{Rightside}

\begin{Leftside} 
\begin{german}
\beginnumbering
\pstart
\noindent
Wir preisen dich, Gott, für Gnadengaben, deren Lobpreis von ihrem\footnoteA{D.h. der Gnadengaben} Anwachsen kündet, und wir bitten um Segen für deinen Propheten Muḥammad, der die Gemeinde auf den rechten Weg führt.
\pend
\endnumbering
\end{german}
\end{Leftside}
\end{pairs}
\Columns

\end{document}