Incompatibility between footmisc-option multiple and hyperref

Question

There is a question about nested footnotes with commas, which has some answers. Nested footnotes can be properly numbered, and they can be properly hyperlinked. Remaining problem: Hyperlinked footnotes are not separated by commas, although the footmisc package with option multiple is used. Minimal not-working example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[multiple]{footmisc}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
Text\footnote{Here is a footnote.}\footnote{Here is another footnote.}.
\end{document}

While \textsuperscript{,\,} between the footnote(mark)s would be possible, I am looking for some automatic solution. (The better, if it would also work for nested footnotes.)

Answer 1

I see that I come some months to late but I want to present my approach to maybe solve the problem or at least to provide a workaround. The problem at my side is, the approach is so simple so that I can't imagine that there is no other people who had the same idea before. So my question is: Where is the catch in this approach?

To explain the code: I redefine the footnote-command and have a look to the following command using \futurelet. If the next command is also a footnote-command a , is included. What do you think about it?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\let\oldFootnote\footnote
\newcommand\nextToken\relax

\renewcommand\footnote[1]{%
    \oldFootnote{#1}\futurelet\nextToken\isFootnote}

\newcommand\isFootnote{%
    \ifx\footnote\nextToken\textsuperscript{,}\fi}

\textheight=3cm
\begin{document}

Text\footnote{First footnote}\footnote{Second footnote}\footnote{Third footnote} Text\footnote{Fourth footnote} Text

\end{document} 

And this is the output of the given example:

Answer 2

As @lockstep notes in the comments section above, the incompatibility between the footmisc and hyperref packages -- which somehow ends up suppressing the automatic insertion of a raised comma between consecutive footnote marks -- is sadly a fairly well-known phenomenon.

As a workaround, you could set up a macro named, say, \fnsep (short for "footnote mark separator") in the preamble:

\newcommand\fnsep{\textsuperscript{,}}

and then insert this little macro every time you have two consecutive footnotes -- which doesn't happen very often, right? -- as in

Text.\footnote{Here is a footnote.}\fnsep\footnote{Here is another footnote.}

Answer 3

Another possibility: the fnpct package handles multiple footnotes and supports hyperref correctly. However, since the main purpose of the package is a different one you might want to use its option dont-mess-around.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fnpct}
 % uncomment if don't want the kerning and punctuation switching:
% \setfnpct{dont-mess-around}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\begin{document}

Text\footnote{First footnote}\footnote{Second footnote}\footnote{Third footnote}
Text\footnote{Fourth footnote} Text

\newpage\null%so we see that the hyperlinks are correct
\end{document}

Answer 4

Here is a (slight) improvement of the (very nice!) solution provided by @Holle that takes in account the optional argument of the \footnote command (as provided by the LaTeX kernel). It makes use of the expl3 syntax.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewCommandCopy{__old_footnote}{\footnote}
\let__next_token\relax
\RenewDocumentCommand {\footnote} { O{} m }{
  \tl_if_empty:nTF {#1}{
    __old_footnote { #2 }
  }{
    __old_footnote [#1] { #2 }
  }
  \futurelet__next_token__next_token_is_footnote:
}
\cs_new_protected:Npn __next_token_is_footnote:
{\if_meaning:w\footnote__next_token\textsuperscript{,}\fi}
\ExplSyntaxOff
\textheight=3cm
\begin{document}
Text\footnote{First footnote}\footnote{Second footnote}\footnote{Third footnote}
Text\footnote{Fourth footnote} Text
Text\footnote[10]{Fifth footnote} Text
\end{document}