[Tex/LaTex] Is a three-column footnote layout possible

Question

I'm contemplating the idea of a document layout where citations are author-year-style, but given as footnotes. That is, those notes would be (for the most part) very short, which is a bad match for the one-column footnote layout of the standard classes. One possible remedy is to consolidate footnotes into a single paragraph per page, as done (e.g.) by the para option of the footmisc package:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[para]{footmisc}

\begin{document}

\null\vfill% just for the example

Some text.\footnote{Author 2001} Some more text.\footnote{Buthor 2002}
    And some more.\footnote{Cuthor 2003} Does this text ever end?\footnote{Duthor 2004}
    Yes.\footnote{Euthor 2005}

\end{document}

Another option is to typeset footnotes in two columns (with the running text still one-column). This can be achieved with the dblfnote package:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{dblfnote}
\DFNalwaysdouble% no attempt to fit footnotes into a single column

\begin{document}

\null\vfill% just for the example

Some text.\footnote{Author 2001} Some more text.\footnote{Buthor 2002}
    And some more.\footnote{Cuthor 2003} Does this text ever end?\footnote{Duthor 2004}
    Yes.\footnote{Euthor 2005}

\end{document}

What I'm looking for is a layout similar to that of dblfnote, but with footnotes typeset in three columns. Can this be done with reasonable effort? (I'm hoping for a clever hack of either dblfnote's macros or of the typesetting routines of the multicol package.)

Notes: multicol-like column balancing is not required, and I'm indifferent as to whether column breaks within footnotes should be permitted or not (dblfnote offers both options).

Answer 1

The memoir class provides three-column footnotes. In all it provides four kinds of footnote layouts: normal, two-column, three-column, and run together in a single paragraph.

\documentclass{memoir}

\threecolumnfootnotes

\begin{document}

\null\vfill% just for the example

Some text.\footnote{Author 2001} Some more text.\footnote{Buthor 2002}
    And some more.\footnote{Cuthor 2003} Does this text ever end?\footnote{Duthor 2004}
    Yes.\footnote{Euthor 2005}

\end{document}