Bug#451258: fop: footnote inside varlistentry is not rendered in PDF output

[Michalis Kamburelis]

Michael Koch wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 01:09:10PM +0100, Michalis Kamburelis wrote:
>> The same problem occurs with footnotes in orderedlist, for a test just try
>>
>> <orderedlist>
>>   <listitem><para>Third footnote from ordered list
>>     <footnote><para>Third footnote.</para></footnote></para>
>>   </listitem>
>> </orderedlist>
> 
> Was this fixed with the fop 0.94 update? Can you still reproduce this?
> 

I upgraded to fop 1:0.94.dfsg-1 in unstable and yes, the bug is still
present.

Some details about this bug that I found in the meantime:

1. It affects footnotes in all <variablelist>, <glosslist>,
<orderedlist>, <itemizedlist> DocBook elements.

2. If you're working with <variablelist> or <glosslist>, then there is
one workaround: you can set variablelist.as.blocks and
glosslist.as.blocks XSL parameters (like

  <xsl:param name="variablelist.as.blocks">1</xsl:param>
  <xsl:param name="glosslist.as.blocks">1</xsl:param>

). This way <variablelist> and <glosslist> are not formatted as real
lists in XML-FO files, and footnotes from there work OK. But this also
changes the look of these elements in PDF output, so it may not be
desirable.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help at all if you want to make footnotes
from <orderedlist> or <itemizedlist>.

3. It turns out this is a known problem with FOP, see
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/knownissues.html (search for text
"Footnotes swallowed in lists") and
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37579

I hope this info helps others that are affected by this bug...

Michalis