@egreg I need the page number actually. The real scenario is to make a software documentation and mark some items related to new ideas or bug issue so I can locate them in the future if new implementations are made or bug fixings are done and I can edit or remove the irrelevant footnotes.

@Karl'sstudents This is good for a question on the main site.

@egreg OK. I will make it as a new question on the main site.

@PauloCereda Did I mention the duck's had to lose his monocle?

Do you know where we can find the newest edition of LaTeX and Friends excerpts? I found the older one here: stat.wvu.edu/~jharner/courses/stat512/LaTeX-and-Friends.pdf .

@Karl'sstudents On the Author's homepage would have been my feeling.

@Karl'sstudents I'm not really sure that PDF should be there at all!

(I have a PDF version as I proofread it, but the deal was no redistribution)

@marcvandongen Could you comment on the link above?

@NicolaTalbot oh. :(

Still cute though. :)

@PauloCereda There was a possibility that I might have to flip some of the images and there would've been inconsistencies as to which eye had the monocle.

@PauloCereda He's got a great hat though :-)

@NicolaTalbot ooh! :)

@PauloCereda I had to flip one of the images in the hedgehog book and the moon ended up back-to-front, so I had to use gimp to flip just the moon back again!

@NicolaTalbot ooh David Cooperfield-like magic! :)

@PauloCereda I've been having a lot of fun with gimp :-) The duck book has the background and foreground as separate images so we can move the animals around on the background.

@NicolaTalbot ooh like an animated story!

@PauloCereda I could make a special edition using beamer and have it as a flipbook!

@NicolaTalbot Yay!

@StefanKottwitz tex.stackexchange.com/questions/102878/…

Can anybody confirm that the Python script in this question works? I don't have Python 2.7

@egreg did you mean \small\normalsize ?

@DavidCarlisle Well, that wouldn't do much, would it?

\renewcommand\precisfont{\small\normalfont\itshape}
\renewcommand\chapterprecishere[1]{%
  \prechapterprecis #1\par
  \ifnum\numexpr3-\prevgraf\relax>0
    \vspace{\numexpr3-\prevgraf\relax\baselineskip}
  \fi
  \postchapterprecis}

is it better to close this question tex.stackexchange.com/q/102464/15717 ?

@DavidCarlisle Just put the computation before \postchapterprecis; this will work with the normal definition of \postchapterprecis. If the user does differently, they're on their own.

@egreg yes hooking it in front of postchapterprecis is better as I think I mentioned when I deleted, but if you do it after but re-assert \small it comes to the same thing doesn't it so long as you multiply the count from prevgraf by the baselineskip that was used inside the precis?

@DavidCarlisle But the baselineskip can change after \postchapterprecis, that's the problem.

@egreg I trusted your code to be bug free:)

@DavidCarlisle memoir does \precisfont as part of \prechapterprecis, after doing \begin{quote}.

@tohecz ;-) :

@tohecz See chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/41?m=8541060#8541060 and related messages. :-)

@DavidCarlisle Possibly. I'd add a note telling that if one changes the definitions of \pre... and \post... the code might not work as intended.

@egreg :-) well I put that in my answer now anyway, it's near enough and works on the MWE (and your comment still says \small\normalsize

@DavidCarlisle Not any more. ;-)

@DavidCarlisle I think I have found a little, very specific bug in longtable. I've tried for two hours to catch it in a MWE but the MWE does not show the error. My longtable starts at the bottom of a page. It shows only a rule, then the text: continued on next page, pagebreak, Heading continuing, table header and the starts the table with the correct table heading, table head and table. Can I post here a picture? I don't know ...

@Kurt There are no bugs, only undiscovered features in my packages.

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@Kurt Politically incorrect reply: you can post images by clicking on upload...

@Kurt Yes the upload button should work if you have a picture. Is there a (normal) float (eg table or figure) on the page on which longtable starts?

so is there a table at the top of page 171?

ah, okay. it worked. In the picture you see the last line of text, followed by the longtable. If I delete a little bit text bevore the table or insert some this effect is gone and the table is typesetted as usual (that was the no bug ;-)).

@Kurt yes or \clearpage before the table usually works as well, but it shouldn;t be needed so I'm trying to see why it does it, you didn't answer if there was another table on that page. Otherwise it's the footnotes confusing longtable, which package are you using for the 2 col footnotes?

No, there is no more table on page 171. I have paragraphs, a section, text longtable.

@Kurt hmm only seen that when longtable got confused by how much space was on the current page due to floats floating in, but I suppose the footnotes could have a similar effect, there is a patch for the float case (which I dare not apply because it would change too many documents but I should make into a package option) I'll find it, it might work here too..

I'm using package dblfnote. My problem is that the MWE including documentclass scrbook, xcolor, booktabs, inputenc, [ngerman]babel and caption till now does not show this effect in a MWE...

@Kurt tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48280/…

@DavidCarlisle Thanks

If you are near the bottom of the page longtable is always in a slightly delicate state before it decides whether to fit the heading on the current page, and sticking \clearpage in front makes things a lot easier. But of course sometimes you really want to allow the table to start mid page and that isn't an option. scrbook chnages the output routine a bit which makes longtable a bit less tested, booktabs doesn't help much either as its rules introduce more space (so more break points)

I have no idea what dblfnote does, but apart from those minor points there is no reason the packages shouldn't all work together:-)

@DavidCarlisle package dblfnote changed footnotes to be typesetted in two colomns (I do not want to have footnotes with more than 100 characters per line). I just saw this strange typesetting while changing my document a little bit for the next course.

@DavidCarlisle I'm not finished with rewriting and I'm pretty sure things wil change on this page but I was very surprised to see this funny typesetting. I will test it without package booktabs and dblfnote. I will tell you if I have a result. And thanks for your fast answer!

@Kurt yes I guessed that's what the package does, but without looking at its code I can't say if it does it in a way that lets longtable know how much space is left on the page after it has formatted the footnotes. longtable just hooks in to the original output routine (using some code I stole from multicol) by redefining some internal macros and footnote packages have to do the same, and it's not that surprising if they occasionally trip each other up.