If a footnote spreads across three columns, does it always fill the middle one?

Question

Not a scripting question per se, but it sure affects the script I'm writing. I'm trying to detect and address collisions between footnotes and other items on a page. I think in the world of documents I inhabit, I'm not going to run into such a long footnote, but the moment you start thinking that way one pops out of the woodwork and smacks you in the face.

I guess the reason for my question is some sense that maybe there's a kind of column-balancing that goes on with footnotes? No of course not. I think I know the answer to my own question: Yes! But I wonder if there's a circumstance where it's not true.

Anyone have any instances of a footnote spreading to three columns without filling the second one? For example, could keeps cause a space to appear at the top, enough to allow some story text in there?

Wait: InDesign hates empty text columns -- is one that only has a partial footnote in it considered empty? In the case where there is only a partial footnote, myTextColumn.footnotes.length returns 0.

Perhaps I should construct some examples to see what happens.

Dave

Dave_Saunders · Answer

Well, it didn't take much experimentation to discover that the answer is no. The middle column in a three-column frame has zero or one line of text from the main story along with the text from the long footnote. And this without any keeps at all. It looks really ridiculous when there is just one line there, although in the case I was working with I used the default gap above the notes of zero. Let's try with a gap there ...

Same thing happens when a gap is called for. You get one or no lines at the top of the second column, depending on the height of the frame.

Dave

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