I have a book wherein groupings of footnotes will use letters as marks (i.e., a, b, c, etc.). However, new groupings that start again will be common on a single page. Each grouping is numbered using a counter, and this counter is shown on the printed page. I would like the footnotes to appear normally inline, but I would like to attach the counter value to each "a" footnote in the footer.
\documentclass{book}
\newcounter{grouping}
\newcommand{\newGrouping}{\stepcounter{grouping}\textsuperscript{\arabic{grouping}}\setcounter{footnote}{0}}
\renewcommand*{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}}
\begin{document}
\newGrouping This is some example text.\footnote{First example footnote.}
Some more text\footnote{Second example footnote.} and yet more.\footnote{Third example footnote.}
\newGrouping Now with a new grouping,\footnote{First example footnote in second grouping.}
there is some ambiguity about which footnote\footnote{Second example footnote in second grouping.}
is intended.\footnote{Third example footnote in second grouping.}
\end{document}
What I would like is for the first "a" footnote to show as 1a at the bottom and the second to show as 2a. I tried to replace \renewcommand*{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}} with the following:
\renewcommand*{\thefootnote}{\ifnum\value{footnote}>1\alph{footnote}\else\arabic{\grouping}{\alph{footnote}\fi}
This did the opposite of what I intended. It left the bottom alone and added the grouping number inline.
I tried to attach an image, but it was not working. Here is the link: https://i.sstatic.net/0QzuE.jpg
