How to format footnote caller as italic and have a space between keyword and footnote caller?

Question

My problem: Sometimes in the maintext, the footnote caller auto-created in an alphabet order prints in the end of the keyword can combine with the keyword to create a new word which has different meaning.

I want to provide a visual clue for the reader NOT to read the keyword and the footnote caller as one word. I don't have the option to use color in printing, only black.

In ParaTExt 9, how to format the footnote caller always in italic and have some space before it in order to seperate the keyword and the footnote caller?

In PTXPrints, how to print the new footnote caller formatting?

Answer 1

This is not easily accomplished in Paratext, but can be handled directly in PTXPrint by creating and applying a style to the callers. Here is are two quick videos showing the process that I used to create an italic caller, and how to add a little more space before.

How to format a footnote caller in PTXPrint

How to set a larger space before the footnote caller

Basically the process is to create a new style to apply to the footnote caller (for example fCaller) and then add a snippet of code in the file called ptxprint-mods.tex. In my case, if the created style is fCaller, then the snippet added would be:

\sethook{start}{fCaller}{\hskip 0.1em}

In my case I had to use 0.2em to get the caller to move further from the text since the caller is italic. You can try adjusting this number.

Comments

Thank you for your answer. I learn how to create a new style by cloning the standard style \v and use character map to find unicode number.

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Thanks Phil, I especially appreciated the first part of the video explaining how to add a new style for the callers. The 2nd half seemed a bit more confusing for me, so I looked in our "snippets.md" file to see if there's an easier way; and indeed, there is - with a sethook in the ptxprint-mods.tex file explained here:

https://github.com/sillsdev/ptx2pdf/blob/master/docs/documentation/snippets.md#set-a-larger-space-before-footnote-caller-in-the-text

It would be nice to have all of this as an option that's easier to control without having to manually create new styles, and set tweaks. [We'll have a think...] 

BTW, snippets.md is a temporary holding place for good ideas (hints/hacks) until we realize that enough people want to use a particular feature; at which point we often add it in the UI. The easiest place to add these kinds of things is through a "Code Snippet" button, but [lack of] discoverability is a major problem with the things hiding under each of those buttons.

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Thanks Mark - that works well. I'll add that to my answer above.

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First thank you @Phil_Leckrone for a very helpful and super-well presented answer. We had a similar need and I could apply this solution within a few moments.

Secondly, I had come here and had at first not found a solution, so was in the process of writing yet another question. One other user has a question from 2015 about how to set the font of the callers, which was also our need.

So some super-user could make a bracket-question or edit the title here into something more generic like "How to customize footnote callers in PTXprint". I believe those callers are so weird and so important with their "job" in the main text of Scripture, that several projects would want to make them better. This feeling is also supported by the fact that PT allows users to provide their custom "footnote caller sequence". So we had a long think about that option many years ago and found a nice solution for our context; and now we had struggled to have our solution rendered by PTXprint. And Phil made us very happy today with his solution.

Thirdly I want to give our +1 or +10 to make this important detail better accessible in PTXprint. I had to spend plenty time today, to research those exotic callers. They do not even have their own markers in USFM and no style in PTXprint for whatever historic reasons. They are important, but they get treated like Cinderella in our tools. Please let them shine. The fact that PTXprint is using the style for /v as default for footnote callers also needs attention, I believe. 


Fourthly I want to share our own solution for a latin script in a rural location of this world, where literacy is still struggling, even in 2026:
In PT we have defined the footnote callers as U+2460 .. U+2473. Those are known as "circled digits" and "circled numbers". Those little critters cannot change words of the main text into mystery words and they cannot be confused with verse numbers. They are quite distince, and since we are not over-using footnotes, they do not clutter our pages.

We had found locally that our target audience does not "notice" footnote callers when they are "just letters", because there is already "lots of text", of course. Same for superscript numbers because of verse-numbers. So we are having good results, for years, with our circled callers. hth

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Addition about the new style as explained by Phil:

In April 2026 (using PTXprint version 3.0.18) PTXprint behaves strangely when adding a new style, based on an existing style:
- At first, the new style, when created based on /v, gets listed under > Styles > "Chapters & Verses". Fine.

- Also at first the marker looks correct in the styles list but the name might not look correct (I had overlooked when defining the new style that PTXprint had suggested "myownmarker - Verse Number" as an unhelpul name.)

- Even when you edit the name of your new style, it still gets listed with the initial (in my case wrong) name; nothing I tried made PTXprint correct the style-name in the style-list in the left pane. (mild bug)

- Work-around: When I Quit PTXprint and re-lauched the tool, finally my new custom style was listed with its corrected name.

- But the location in my tool is not as Phil has shown in his video at 1:15 : In my PTXprint the tool has created a new main section in the styles-list below "Other" and below "Obsolete & Deprecated"; it is called "Footnote Caller", using what I have used as my name in the box "Name" to create this new section. Will be different for other users.
This feels even better than putting all custom styles under "Other", so thank you developers. hth

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The developers are in the process of developing and adding a custom font with commonly-used callers and will make sure PTXprint has in-built styles to handle the kinds of footnote and cross-reference callers that translation teams would use. If you want to see what markers/characters are proposed for this font, please visit this spreadsheet and leave your comments/feedback as needed. We are particularly interested in characters that other translators or scripture typesetters are using which you feel are of universal importance and need to be added to this repertoire.

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@Mark P, this is very good news. I went and had a look at the spreadsheet.

All the "classic" markers are known to me, since my childhood. The "starry" markers are pretty and I could not remember thoses easily, for example to look up an end-note in an appendix of a paper-book. Why? Because I can not name them, like I could name "k" or "8" or "date of birth" or "date of death" or "paragraph" or "infinity" symbols.
I would guess that some of those could be "hard to read" when used as tiny super-script in areas with poor literacy. This is not a criticism; please do not remove any item from that list.

Our project has vowed many years ago to publish every output in 16 pt or larger, and that helps. And we are not shy in using not-tiny callers. Since ours use circles, they do not so badly disturb the normal reading, since they do not get confused with regular letters.

I am delighted, that other people have also had the idea with the enclosed or circled numbers.
I know that the encircled characters also exist as lower case and upper case latin letters, starting at U+2406. In case some project might need "many callers" for some special situation like study notes.
So for myself or for people in our audience, a letter in a (not too small rendered) circle might be easier to distinguish than, for example U+2724 versus U+2723 depending on font and size. This is, because we have all leant to look "where it matters", when we learnt to read. I can easily distinguish p, q, a, d, b  because I know what matters, and I still struggle with Hebrew letters, where all is tiny and looks the same to me.

So again, you asked for feedback and you are on the right track. That will be another friendly and useful feature in PTXprint. Please greet the team and pass my thanks.