Harry Binswanger wrote (in part)
>How do you change the font and size of the footnote numbers as they appear
>in the body of the document--i.e., as the antecedent symbol to which the
>footnote content then refers?
(a) Foot-(or end-)note indicators (which won't necessarily be numbers, of
course) apparently behave like any other superscript characters with
respect to size and elevation above the text baseline; i.e., the note
indicators obey the same formatting defaults applicable to any superscript
character at that point.
(b) Both the height (above text baseline) and the size of super-(or
sub-)script characters are governed by the LH default. This default is
specified in the file XwSet.dfl in XyWin; in XyDOS 4 it's Settings.dfl.
In my XwSet.dfl (i.e. for XyWin) this relevant lines read as
follows:
>; LH (low-high) sets super/subscript: percent size, percent up,
percent down
>;DF LH=olim 50,117,22 (changed 28-2-97 to 65,55,35)
>;DF LH=65,55,35 (changed 4-4-97 to 78,60,35)
>DF LH=78,60,35
[Attentive readers may infer from this a somewhat indecisive temperament;
they will not be wholly mistaken.]
My Settings.dfl (i.e. for XyDOS 4) omits the explanatory line (i.e. "; LH
(low-high) sets ...") helpfully provided in XyWin.
So far, so simple. But as for the other half of Harry's question --
changing the _font_ of foot-(or end-)note indicators in the text -- the
default is for the indicators to take the same font as the surrounding
text.
I guess it would be possible to create specifications for a separate Style,
and write a program that invokes that Style immediately before the
footnote, and reverts to the prevailing Style immediately after it.
I frequently do something analogous, to produce a printout in which
footnote numbers are in bold italic, preceded by a backslash and followed
by a forward slash (in typographic imitation of the V-shaped marking that
I, as a fledgling copyeditor some time around the Boer War, was instructed
to insert around each in-text footnote number to make those numbers harder
for the compositor & proofreader to overlook). But I haven't tried, in the
process, to also change the font of the note indicator.
I imagine it _could_ be done without using Styles (which I dislike), but I
would expect that Styles would be the _simplest_ way to achieve what Harry
is aiming for. The kludgy aspect of all this, in my experience, is writing
an XPL routine that will find out what Style (or font or other spec) was
operative just before the note indicator, and restoring that
Style/font/etc. at the _end_ of the note copy. This isn't too difficult (in
XyWin, at least; it should be the same in XyDOS) in principle; but in
practice I imagine it must be full of heffalump traps as soon as Styles are
introduced (mainly because when I start to write an XPL routine to add a
"U[se] S[tyle]" instruction, I get absent-minded and wind up U[sing] a
S[tyle] for which no "S[ave] S[tyle]" delta exists. Whatever else goes
wrong (and in my XPL ventures anything that can go wrong will) is bound to
be less crash-prone and easier to find and fix than a rogue "US..."
Cheers
Eric Van Tassel
e-mail: EricVT@xxxxxxxx