The bigfoot package for arranging footnote apparatus for text–critical editions offers several advantages for ordinary documents as well.
While user–visible development has been somewhat slow, the currently released version offers new compatibility features to various other packages, and the remaining problems for typesetting a large–scale book project have been tackled, including a load of bug fixes in the optimization. The results are staggeringly æsthetic page break decisions in the most complicated circumstances.
But even the standard single–apparatus situation benefits from bigfoot.sty : once breaking a footnote can’t be avoided, the combined selection of footnote and main text breaks can be used to avoid widows, clubs or hyphens across page breaks. Additionally, color in footnotes and fragile or verbatim text is supported.