footnote without mark but ordered

Question

Footnote without a marker

Using it can crete footnotes without marks but they will can be confusing with marked footnotes.

  note 1
  1 note 2
  note 3

note 3 can be seen as an extension of note 2.

I'm thinking that using a symbol will work to distinguish between the notes but adding it to the front produces an offset issue.

    ! note 1
  1 note 2
    ! note 3

What I'd like is a command where I can set the footnote symbol

\footnoteX[\dagger]{footnote1}
\footnoteX{footnote2}
\footnoteX[\dagger]{footnote3}

and it would replace the counter with dagger, all the alignment will be correct.

Answer 1

Hacking together some stuff gives

\usepackage[perpage, para*]{manyfoot}
\DeclareNewFootnote{Anonymous}
\DeclareNewFootnote{Main}
\MakePerPage{Main}

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\fn}[2][\@nil]{%
  \begingroup
  \def\tmp{#1}%  
  \ifx\tmp\@nnil
    \renewcommand\thefootnote{\arabic{footnote}}\noindent\footnoteMain{#2}%
  \else
    \ifx\tmp\empty
        \renewcommand\thefootnote{}\FootnotetextAnonymous{\dagger}{#2}%    
    \else
        \renewcommand\thefootnote{}\FootnotetextAnonymous{#1}{#2}%    
    \fi
    \addtocounter{footnote}{-1}%
  \fi
  \endgroup
}
\makeatother

and seems to work.

\fn{}   [uses counter]
\fn[]{} [default to dagger]
\fn[*]{} [uses * as symbol]

Answer 2

This may not match exactly what you want because it groups the different kinds of footnotes rather than interspersing them, but I post in case it is useful:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{manyfoot}
\DeclareNewFootnote{B}
\renewcommand{\thefootnoteB}{\fnsymbol{footnoteB}}
\begin{document}
\null\vfill
Filler text.\footnote{A footnote.}
Filler text.\footnote{Another footnote.}
Filler text.\footnoteB{Yet another footnote.}
Filler text.\footnote{Still yet another footnote.}
Filler text.\footnoteB{How many footnotes can you get?}
\end{document}