Marginal notes (aka Marginalia)

[DJP]

Publisher has the ability to place references as sidenotes.  These have (typically) a reference number in the text keyed to the note.

I'd like to create a document where explanatory notes appear in the margin but without any numeric reference.  This is the layout used, for instance, in the manual by @MikeTO (and thanks to Mike for that excellent resource!).  I could create a document with wide outer margins and manually put in a text box for each note.  But it would be nice if the notes kept their position relative to the main text (if, for instance, I added text above the note location).  Is there any easier/better way?

Edit: I think this ended up in the wrong section (it's not a tutorial).  Not sure how to move it . . . .

[thomaso]

You can use the Pinning Panel and let the objects in the margin column float outside the story text frame. Make sure to activate the "Mirror" option to get them placed accordingly if the text flow moves them from a left to a right page (and vice versa). In this example the margin text is styled as "Align towards spine" to get the right-/left aligned toggling on even and odd pages.

v1105 margin column.afpub

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, DJP said:

This is the layout used, for instance, in the manual by @MikeTO (and thanks to Mike for that excellent resource!). 

I think Mike uses Sidenotes, which will do what you've described.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, DJP said:

Publisher has the ability to place references as sidenotes.  These have (typically) a reference number in the text keyed to the note.

I'd like to create a document where explanatory notes appear in the margin but without any numeric reference.  This is the layout used, for instance, in the manual by @MikeTO (and thanks to Mike for that excellent resource!).  I could create a document with wide outer margins and manually put in a text box for each note.  But it would be nice if the notes kept their position relative to the main text (if, for instance, I added text above the note location).  Is there any easier/better way?

Hi, I created all of the sidebar tips as sidenotes, not with the pinning feature. I tried to do it with pinning as @thomaso showed but there was a bug at the time with pinned text frames that had independent baseline grid set. It doesn't matter in the version of the manual you've seen, but the original template had a 2-column body with the text aligned to the document's baseline grid, and the tips in the sidebar with smaller type ignored the document's baseline grid. That bug is fixed now and in any case I quickly switched to a simpler layout.

@walt.farrell is the one who suggested using sidenotes to me and I think they work better for tips in the margins of the document so I recommend them. The key is that I set In Main Text > Number Text to # while editing, and I set In Note Body > Number Text to blank. Just before exporting I have to change the former to blank so that you don't see the # sign in the exported PDF. I chose # because it's wide enough to see, especially with Highlight Fields turned on, and because I need something so I can cut, copy, and paste them around the document.

I originally tried to insert "Tips: " and "Definition: " into the In Note Body > Number Text field and assign the red and blue colours automatically with my Tips and Definition character styles. I do NOT recommend that approach unless every sidenote will be identical. Publisher has a great note feature but the big flaw is that it has one preset named Document-Widw for the majority of your notes and then custom notes for the rest. I set Document-Wide for Tips since they were most of the sidenotes and created the Definition ones as custom. But if you switch one to Custom, the next one you create will also be Custom. I was always messing up. And I ran into a serious crash bug that I believe still isn't fixed with trying to convert notes from custom to document-wide. Then when I went to export the first version and had to replace # with blank, I found I could only do that for the document-wide ones and I had to fix all of the custom ones manually - there were a few # signs in the first version I shared. I gave up and deleted all the custom ones and made them all document wide - I now type and format the Tips and Definitions text manually. But it turned out this was actually easier - I never ever click the Add Note button any more - it's just so much easier to find another Tip or Definition and copy and paste its # reference mark.

Here's a screenshot of my sidenote settings.

[DJP]

Thanks for all the replies, and particularly to @MikeTO for the very detailed instructions and explanations.  I have copied this info to the folder where I store files for my new book.  It will help tremendously.