[Tex/LaTex] Sidenotes appear on the wrong side for Tufte-Latex Documents

sidenotestufte

The Tufte-Latex class has an option to place the margin for even pages on the left-hand side and for uneven pages on the right-hand side:

\documentclass[twoside,symmetric]{tufte-book}

but unfortunately some sidenotes are still on the wrong side:

enter image description here

Is there any possibility to avoid this?

EDIT: The problem appears almost always for sidenotes in the first three sentences of a new page. Inserting

\newpage

 \clearpage

by hand above the problematic footnotes solves the problem, but obviously this is a bad solution.

Best Answer

Because LaTeX's output routine runs asynchronously with TeX's page builder, margin notes can appear on the wrong side of the page when they're near the top of the page.

As LaTeX places margin notes, it looks to see if it's currently on a recto or verso page and places the margin note accordingly. However, TeX may come along after the margin note has been placed and decide to move the margin note (along with a few regular lines of text) to the following page. When TeX moves the material to the next page, the margin note stays in the same position.

The mparhack package works around this problem by adding label to each margin note and recording which page it falls on. When you run LaTeX a second time, it looks at which page the margin note ended up on and adjusts its position accordingly.

To use this package, just load it in the preamble of your document:

\usepackage{mparhack}

and then run LaTeX a couple times (first to record the pages the margin notes landed on, and again to fix misplaced margin notes).

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Tufte alike design with sidenotes crossing pagebreaks, or: Tufte made with KOMA-Script

To have tables inside the margin note, you could make a kind of non floating table environment, e.g.

\usepackage{environ}
\makeatletter
\NewEnviron{margintable}{%
  \expandafter\@margintable\expandafter{\BODY}%
}
\newcommand*\@margintable[1]{%
  \makenote[paragraphs]{%
    \protect\begin{nonfloattable}\detokenize{#1}\protect\end{nonfloattable}
  }%
}
\newenvironment{nonfloattable}{%
  \par\noindent\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
    \def\@captype{table}%
}{%
  \end{minipage}\par
}

But there is a problem: It seems that writing a label to the aux-file from within a note does not work, so \label{tab:secondtable} inside a margintable environment would not result in a label.

Strange: Writing the caption into the aux file does work.

I currently do not know why writing the label to the aux file does not work but writing the lot entry into the aux file does work. Nevertheless, you could use a hack to write the label information into the aux-file when using margintable instead of when making the note:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage, scrlayer-notecolumn, lmodern, blindtext,
ragged2e}

%% step 1: counter
\newcounter{snmark}
\setcounter{snmark}{0}


%% step 2: hanging sidenotes, definition from tugboat
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\hangfrom}[1]{%
  \setbox\@tempboxa\hbox{{#1}}%
  \hangindent \wd\@tempboxa
  \noindent\box\@tempboxa}
\makeatletter

%% step 3: define sidenote marks in the text
\newcommand{\makesidenotemark}{%
  \textsuperscript{\thesnmark}
}%


%% step 4: and now the definition of sidenotes
\newcommand{\sidenote}[1]{%
  \refstepcounter{snmark}% Zähler erhöhen
  \makesidenotemark{}% Nummer im Text setzen.
  \makenote[paragraphs]{%
    \hangfrom{%
      \makebox[1em][l]{%
        \thesnmark}
            }
        \protect\RaggedRight{} #1}% Text setzen im Rand
}


%% this is, except for the values (».7«) from scrguide.pdf to define
%% the notecolumn.

\newlength{\paragraphscolwidth}
\AfterCalculatingTypearea{%
\setlength{\paragraphscolwidth}{.4\textwidth}%
\addtolength{\paragraphscolwidth}{-\marginparsep}%
}
\recalctypearea
\DeclareNewNoteColumn[%
position=\oddsidemargin+1in
+.7\textwidth
+\marginparsep,
width=\paragraphscolwidth,
font=\footnotesize
]{paragraphs}

\usepackage{environ}
\makeatletter
\NewEnviron{margintable}{%
  \expandafter\@margintable\expandafter{\BODY}%
}
\newcommand*\@margintable[1]{%
  \global\let\labeltoset\@empty
  \@tempcnta\value{table}%
  \begin{lrbox}{\@tempboxa}
    \begin{minipage}{\paragraphscolwidth}
      \def\label##1{%
        \xdef\labeltoset{%
          \labeltoset
          \noexpand\protected@write\noexpand\@auxout{}{%
            \noexpand\string\noexpand\newlabel{##1}{{\@currentlabel}{\thepage}}}%
        }%
      }%
      \def\@captype{table}%
      #1%
    \end{minipage}
  \end{lrbox}%
  \setcounter{table}{\@tempcnta}%
  \makenote[paragraphs]{%
    \protect\begin{nonfloattable}\detokenize{#1}\protect\end{nonfloattable}
  }%
  \labeltoset
}
\newenvironment{nonfloattable}{%
  \par\noindent\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
    \def\@captype{table}%
}{%
  \end{minipage}\par
}

%% Delete all sidenotes:
%\renewcommand{\sidenote}[1]{\relax}

\begin{document}
\begin{addmargin}[0pt]{.3\textwidth}
  This is the text with a \sidenote{See here.\blindtext}.
  \blindtext


  And here we have a second paragraph and a second
  sidenote\sidenote{\blindtext}.
  \blindtext

  And this is the big hit: We can have sidenotes which include
  pagebreaks!\sidenote{Proof of concept: \blindtext{}}


  \syncwithnotecolumns[paragraphs]

      And now we somewhere have a table:
  \begin{table}[b]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ll}
      Proof\sidenote{From inside the float} & of concept\\
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{This is a table}
    \label{tab:table}
  \end{table}

Besides that, we even can have tabulars in the margin\sidenote{%
  Tabular in the margin:

  \protect\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\protect\hline
    a& b\\\protect\hline
    a& b\\\protect\hline
    a& b\\\protect\hline
  \protect\end{tabular}
}, but they have
to be narrow and well protected.

\begin{margintable}
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{This is a second table}%
  \label{tab:secondtable}
\end{margintable}

See also table~\ref{tab:secondtable}.

\end{addmargin}

\listoftables

\end{document}

But note, there is still a problem: The page number of the label will be wrong if the note moves to another page.

Update: From scrlayer-notecolumn 0.1.2583 of KOMA-Script 3.23.2583 \label in notes does work as expected. And with the new \makenote* you do not need all these \protect any longer. So the following does work:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage, scrlayer-notecolumn, lmodern, blindtext,
ragged2e}

%% step 1: counter
\newcounter{snmark}
\setcounter{snmark}{0}


%% step 2: hanging sidenotes, definition from tugboat
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\hangfrom}[1]{%
  \setbox\@tempboxa\hbox{{#1}}%
  \hangindent \wd\@tempboxa
  \noindent\box\@tempboxa}
\makeatletter

%% step 3: define sidenote marks in the text
\newcommand{\makesidenotemark}{%
  \textsuperscript{\thesnmark}%
}%


%% step 4: and now the definition of sidenotes
\newcommand{\sidenote}[1]{%
  \refstepcounter{snmark}% Zähler erhöhen
  \makesidenotemark{}% Nummer im Text setzen.
  \makenote[paragraphs]{%
    \hangfrom{%
      \makebox[1em][l]{%
        \thesnmark}%
    }%
    \protect\RaggedRight\detokenize{#1}}% Text setzen im Rand
}


%% this is, except for the values (».7«) from scrguide.pdf to define
%% the notecolumn.

\newlength{\paragraphscolwidth}
\AfterCalculatingTypearea{%
\setlength{\paragraphscolwidth}{.4\textwidth}%
\addtolength{\paragraphscolwidth}{-\marginparsep}%
}
\recalctypearea
\DeclareNewNoteColumn[%
position=\oddsidemargin+1in
+.7\textwidth
+\marginparsep,
width=\paragraphscolwidth,
font=\footnotesize
]{paragraphs}

\usepackage{environ}
\makeatletter
\NewEnviron{margintable}{%
  \expandafter\@margintable\expandafter{\BODY}%
}
\newcommand*\@margintable[1]{%
  \makenote*[paragraphs]{%
    \begin{nonfloattable}#1\end{nonfloattable}%
  }%
}
\newenvironment{nonfloattable}{%
  \par\noindent\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
    \def\@captype{table}%
}{%
  \end{minipage}\par
}
\usepackage{makeidx}

%% Delete all sidenotes:
%\renewcommand{\sidenote}[1]{\relax}

\begin{document}
\begin{addmargin}[0pt]{.3\textwidth}
  This is the text with a sidenote\sidenote{See here.\blindtext}.
  \blindtext


  And here we have a second paragraph and a second
  sidenote\sidenote{\blindtext}.
  \blindtext

  And this is the big hit: We can have sidenotes which include
  pagebreaks!\sidenote{Proof of concept: \blindtext{}}


  \syncwithnotecolumns[paragraphs]

      And now we somewhere have a table:
  \begin{table}[b]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ll}
      Proof\sidenote{From inside the float} & of concept\\
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{This is a table}
    \label{tab:table}
  \end{table}

Besides that, we even can have tabulars in the margin\sidenote{%
  Tabular in the margin:

  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
  \end{tabular}%
}, but they have
to be narrow and well protected.

\begin{margintable}
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
    a& b\\\hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{This is a second table}%
  \label{tab:secondtable}
\end{margintable}

See also table~\ref{tab:secondtable}.
\listoftables

\end{addmargin}


\end{document}

For \sidenote you cannot use \makenote*, because \thesnmark needs to be expanded immediately. But you can use the \detokenize trick of \makenote* yourself as shown in the example above.

BTW: In the code above I have fixed several space mistakes.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Tufte alike design with sidenotes crossing pagebreaks, or: Tufte made with KOMA-Script

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