Fwd: Re: how to renumber footnotes?

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

Accidentally sent this message off-list. Trying again:

On Fri, Apr 17 2020, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> org-footnote can't tell that footnote 1 ([fn:1]) at the 
> beginning is in
> the right place when confronted with footnote 1 ([fn:1]) 
> half-way
> through!

No, obviously, so you'll have to renumber the footnotes in the 
second file
before you merge the two files.

> Which is why I'm looking for some other solution, and I believe
> that it might be able to be achieved programmatically. 
> Unfortunately my
> lisp skills are almost nil, hence my request for someone to 
> help.

I use the following function for renumbering stuff such as 
footnotes:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(defun jk-renumber-counters (start regexp)
 "Renumber counters.
Renumbering starts at START.  REGEXP describes the counters to be
renumbered.  The actual number must be enclosed in a group."
 (save-excursion
   (goto-char (point-min))
   ;; because we incf the counter before using it, we need to 
   adjust:
   (let ((counter (1- start))
         (counters (make-hash-table :test 'equal))
         fn)
     (while (re-search-forward regexp nil t)
       (setq fn (match-string 1))
       (replace-match (or (gethash fn counters)
                          (puthash fn (format "%s" (cl-incf
                          counter)) counters))
                      nil nil nil 1)))))
#+end_src

In your case, you should be able to call this function with:

   M-: (jk-renumber-footnotes 355 "\\[fn:\\([0-9]+\\)\\]") RET

Change «355» to the number you want to start the footnotes in the 
second file
with.

If you already merged the two files and don't want to separate 
them again, you
could take out the line `(goto-char (point-min))`, put point at 
the position
where you want to start renumbering footnotes and then call the 
function. But
I'd play it safe and renumber the footnotes before merging the 
files.

HTH


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments