sphinx-doc / sphinx-doc/sphinx

LaTeX: footnote marks behaviour regarding page indicators is not consistent

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builder:latex type:bug
Dominant language
Python
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Description

Describe the bug

In pdf output, footnote marks sometimes indicate the page number of where the footnote is located, if not on the same page, but the behaviour is not systematic, in particular from inside long tables.

A general solution however will be hard to come by, due to phenomenon described in https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/pull/10191#issuecomment-1038807448

How to Reproduce

Create project with this index.rst:

Welcome to FOO's documentation!
===============================


Test footnotes in a longtable
-----------------------------

.. raw:: latex

   \vspace{13cm}

.. list-table:: LongTable caption
    :header-rows: 1
    :class: longtable

    * - first ref to B [#b]_
      - auto-numbered 1 [#]_
    * - second ref to B [#b]_
      - only ref to C [#c]_
    * - auto-numbered 2 [#]_
      - first ref to D [#d]_
    * - second ref to D [#d]_
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b
    * - a
      - b

.. rubric:: Footnotes


.. [#b] B

.. [#c] C

.. [#d] D

.. [#] auto-numbered 1

.. [#] auto-numbered 2

and make latexpdf

Expected behavior

Footnote marks should coherently use or not the page number of footnote.

But in screenshot below we see various problems:

  • footnote from header correctly indicates target page numbers, but for that part of table on last page, it depends whether the footnote was auto-numbered if it detects to be on same page as footnote (without #10191 merged also auto-numbered footnote do not detect they are on same page)
  • footnote from table cells behave differently if they are mutlply referred to or not, or are auto-numbered
Your project

N/A

Screenshots

This is with current 4.x:
Capture d’écran 2022-02-15 à 12 03 11

And this is with merge of #10191:
Capture d’écran 2022-02-15 à 12 03 53

OS

Mac

Python version

3.8

Sphinx version

4.x at b8789b4cb6c or with #10191 merged

Sphinx extensions

No response

Extra tools

No response

Additional context

Relates #10175

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the case from index.rst with make latexpdf, then compare the current 4.x output with the behavior described for the merge of #10191. Trace how footnote marks from long tables and repeated or auto-numbered references determine their target page. Done means footnote marks use page indicators consistently, while accounting for the limitation described in the linked discussion.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
latex, python
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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