1. I have solved my practical problem. I still don't know what exactly happened before -- I don't care. As a hint: It has worked since I have run \outputpenalty=-10004 with \holdinginserts>0 (I reported before that otherwise the \footins box isn't empty with the ensuing \outputenalty=-10002, in spite of \holdinginserts>0). 2. With simply switching \holdinginserts as sketched before, you create another bug (well, wait:). \@specialoutput measures the \footins box ..., so in adding floats it doesn't take account of any footnotes after \holdinginserts>0. I have made an example giving an awkward outcome -- guess: a float that better should have waited for footnotes, but one may wonder how real-life this is, I am preparing something perhaps more digestible, may be for CTAN or what someone suggests ... however, this seems to favour what Frank Mittelbach (at least some frank from latex-bugs...) expressed in latex/3370: the rewriting will be done for LaTeX3, not 2e. -- Uwe Lueck.