[Tex/LaTex] todonotes: Use only left or only right margin

todonotes

Is there any way to force todonotes to place comment bubbles only on the left side of the page, or only on the right side of the page? My corporate document template is two-sided, so todonotes puts the bubbles on the right margin for odd-facing pages, and the left margin for even-facing pages. I need to make the PDF viewing window bigger just to see comments on both odd and even pages. Display area on my tiny laptop is a premium.

I've already \reversemarginpar after invoking packages todonotes and geometry, but comment bubbles still show up in both margins.

I tried to force one-sided output using \documentclass[oneside]{corpTemplate}, but I get a message indicating that the corporate template does not permit one-sidedness.

I've posted this to the LaTeX Community.

Best Answer

By default, todonotes uses \marginpar internally, which is actually defined in base/latex.ltx. The page-switching features are "built in" and I ran into this same problem as you did in a situation where I couldn't switch to using LuaLaTeX or modifying the underlying class (albeit with the Springer-Nature latex package sn-article instead of your corpTemplate).

There are two ways to proceed: either (a) redefine \marginpar to something else where you can control the layout (e.g. an answer along the lines of \let\marginpar\marginnote...) or, (b) a far easier method is to just tell marginpar itself that the document is one-sided. Amazingly, this works by just flicking the "please change sides" switch to "off" in the preamble:

\makeatletter 
\@mparswitchfalse%
\makeatother
\normalmarginpar %for right-handed notes and lines, or 
%\reversemarginpar %if you want them on the left of your twosided document.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to get todonotes in the left margin

Add \reversemarginpar after loading the geometry and todonotes packages. Note that as todonotes writes to the auxiliary file, you'll need to compile your source file at least twice to ensure that the lines it draws between the margin note and the connecting text are properly organised.

[Tex/LaTex] How to make todonotes use all of the margin

Unfortunately, minimal is particularly bad to try the use of todonotes. If you use e.g. article (or whatever you would like to use later) it is already much better.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{todonotes}
\usepackage{showframe}
\begin{document}
blah
\todo{this is just a minimal example.}
\end{document}

I used the showframe package to make the page layout more obvious. You can have a look at this wiki page about latex page layout. Once you get the desired behavior, you can get rid of showframe again.

If it is still not enough margin, you can utilize the geometry package to give yourself ample place in the margin. You could add, e.g.,

\usepackage[paperwidth=210mm,
            paperheight=297mm,
            left=50pt,
            top=50pt,
            textwidth=345pt,
            marginparsep=25pt,
            marginparwidth=124pt,
            textheight=692pt,
            footskip=50pt]
           {geometry}

and the upper page would look like this:

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to get todonotes in the left margin

[Tex/LaTex] How to make todonotes use all of the margin

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