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From: rig@eng.umd.edu (Ronald Greenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: writing footnotes without numbers
Message-ID: <1991Jun27.213115.9094@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Jun 91 21:31:15 GMT
References: <marke.678003955@cuscus>
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Lines: 39

In article <marke.678003955@cuscus> marke@cs.uwa.oz.au (Mark Ellison) writes:
>
>Here is a function which writes a footnote without
>a mark in either the main text or the footnote.
>Some journals (eg Linguistic Inquiry) put acknowledgements
>in an unnumbered first footnote. With this function
>you can put them there.
>
>I put the function in a style file in a standard
>place for easy access and use.
>
>-------------------<LaTeX Source Below>-------------------
>% T Mark Ellison 26 Jun 1991
>%
>% This style file defines the command \nnfoottext
>% which allows the user to at any time insert footnote
>% text material without adding a footnote number
>% to either the main page or the note.

I used to prepare papers in this style; now I generally use \thanks
and \maketitle which gives you something like an asterisk or dagger in
the text and footnote.  In any case, there is a LaTeX method to get
your behavior without making up your own footnote function (in case
you later end up using a style that does footnotes a little
differently or something).

Just make the following definitions

\newcommand{\arabicifpos}[1]{\@arabicifpos{\@nameuse{c@#1}}}
\newcommand{\@arabicifpos}[1]{\ifnum #1>0 \number #1\fi}

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\arabicifpos{footnote}}

Then, you just do, e.g. \footnotetext[0]{stuff} whenever you want.
If, in fact, it is before any other footnotes as in the situation you
originally described, you don't need the "[0]".
--

Ronald I. Greenberg	(Ron)		rig@eng.umd.edu