Re: footnote in caption confuses texi2dvi

[Karl Berry]

    Why? I don't think making a difference between @caption and @shortcaption
    will add anything from a language perspective, 

@shortcaption is intended to be used in, for example, a list of figures.
I really cannot imagine any multiparagraph construct being useful.  It
could only cause trouble, and would most likely be an unwitting error
(typo or otherwise) in the document.  

However, in general, we make no attempt to diagnose every impossible
construct, and I don't think we need to do that here either.  There are
other commands whose argument is supposed to be short and simple that we
don't check, and @shortcaption is certainly one of the most obscure
commands around.

Bottom line: do nothing special.  It will fail with a mysterious error
message at some point, and that's sufficient.