File: groff.info,  Node: ms Footnotes,  Prev: ms Insertions,  Up: ms Body Text

4.6.5.10 Footnotes
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A footnote is typically anchored to a place in the text with a "marker",
which is a small integer, a symbol such as a dagger, or arbitrary
user-specified text.

 -- String: \*[*]
     Place an "automatic number", an automatically generated numeric
     footnote marker, in the text.  Each time this string is
     interpolated, the number it produces increments by one.  Automatic
     numbers start at 1.  This is a Berkeley extension.

   Enclose the footnote text in 'FS' and 'FE' macro calls to set it at
the nearest available "foot", or bottom, of a text column or page.

 -- Macro: .FS [marker]
 -- Macro: .FE
     Begin ('FS') and end ('FE') a footnote.  'FS' calls 'FS-MARK' with
     any supplied MARKER argument, which is then also placed at the
     beginning of the footnote text.  If MARKER is omitted, the next
     pending automatic footnote number enqueued by interpolation of the
     '*' string is used, and if none exists, nothing is prefixed.

   You may not desire automatically numbered footnotes in spite of their
convenience.  You can indicate a footnote with a symbol or other text by
specifying its marker at the appropriate place (for example, by using
'\[dg]' for the dagger glyph) _and_ as an argument to the 'FS' macro.
Such manual marks should be repeated as arguments to 'FS' or as part of
the footnote text to disambiguate their correspondence.  You may wish to
use '\*{' and '\*}' to superscript the marker at the anchor point, in
the footnote text, or both.

   'groff' 'ms' provides a hook macro, 'FS-MARK', for user-determined
operations to be performed when the 'FS' macro is called.  It is passed
the same arguments as 'FS' itself.  An application of 'FS-MARK' is
anchor placement for a hyperlink reference, so that a footnote can link
back to its referential context.(1)  (*note ms Footnotes-Footnote-1::)
By default, this macro has an empty definition.  'FS-MARK' is a GNU
extension.

   Footnotes can be safely used within keeps and displays, but you
should avoid using automatically numbered footnotes within floating
keeps.  You can place a second '\**' interpolation between a '\**' and
its corresponding 'FS' call as long as each 'FS' call occurs _after_ the
corresponding '\**' and occurrences of 'FS' are in the same order as
corresponding occurrences of '\**'.

   Footnote text is formatted as paragraphs are, using analogous
parameters.  The registers 'FI', 'FPD', 'FPS', and 'FVS' correspond to
'PI', 'PD', 'PS', and 'CS', respectively; 'FPD', 'FPS', and 'FVS' are
GNU extensions.

   The 'FF' register controls the formatting of automatically numbered
footnote paragraphs and those for which 'FS' is given a marker argument.
*Note ms Document Control Settings::.

   The default footnote line length is 11/12ths of the normal line
length for compatibility with the expectations of historical 'ms'
documents; you may wish to set the 'FR' string to '1' to align with
contemporary typesetting practices.  In the past,(2) (*note ms
Footnotes-Footnote-2::) an 'FL' register was used for the line length in
footnotes; however, setting this register at document initialization
time had no effect on the footnote line length in multi-column
arrangements.(3)  (*note ms Footnotes-Footnote-3::)

   'FR' should be used in preference to the old 'FL' register in
contemporary documents.  The footnote line length is effectively
computed as 'column-width * \*[FR]'.  If an absolute footnote line
length is required, recall that arithmetic expressions in 'roff' input
are evaluated strictly from left to right, with no operator precedence
(parentheses are honored).

     .ds FR 0+3i \" Set footnote line length to 3 inches.