In friendly and helpfully answering to my late night question
How to create _numbered_ margin notes in ConTeXt?
Hans Hagen wrote 05.06.2008 at 10:04:
quick and dirty command (instead one can use enumerations and do some complex setup)
Before ending this day, I want to thank you for your endeavour (also for Taco's attentive regret). Dear Hans, you know what your code produces: - indeed, the marginal notes are numbered (I can live with the fact that this is not the kind numbering of notes (cf. footnotes) one - the reader - expects); - indeed the notes are no longer printed one over the other. BUT: - the accent sign ( ยด ) placed in the text body before the next word following that wich is explained in the marginal note will not be accepted and understood by the readers. It must, of course, be a superscripts number (the same number as in the referencing marginal note). AND: You won't really expect that someone outside the circle of you programmers who have developed ConTeXt, i. e. a simple (beginning) user of ConTeXt - even if highly willing to learn, is able to change this code in a way to get the wanted results (which I had illustrated with the pdf-file produced under extremly frustrating formating effort with OpenOffice Writer). With two exceptions (\def and \setupinmargin) I did not find any of the used commands documented in "ConTEXt - the manual" or the "commands" quick reference of 2001. I could not verify in the http:// texshow.contextgarden.net/ because not available - as almost everytime. But from my last remember, when it - for once - was available, they are not in there, neither. On the one hand I have still the impression, that ConTeXt is a highly adaptable and flexible typesetting system within TeX (probably my intents with marginal notes as help for understanding texts could find a solution), on the other hand I'm almost giving up with my intention, because the only program/system with wich I a had hope to resolve this problem is not configurable for me, because ... I'm not a programmer or software developer, because you ConTeXt-developers don't care enough about usable, applicable documentation, because the cultural, didactical value of the old (hand-) typesetting technique of marginal notes has come out of fashion, what ever... N. B. I recommend the provision in ConTeXt for marginal notes in my intented sense warmly to you: they are an acquirement of civilization with big possibilities for the future and no other - at least no word processing program - is able to handle them yet in a acceptable manner! Nevertheless, be it pure curiousness or still persistant hope in acquiring the skills for ConTeXt, I would like to know: 1. in your sample code, Hans: between \starttext and \stoptext you write once (the first time of occurrence):
bla bla bla \mnote{xxx} bla bla
but in the second time:
bla bla bla \mnote[foo]{xxx} bla bla bla
and then again:
bla bla bla \mnote{xxx}
Has the [foo] after the first \mnote any relevance and which? 2. the last row of your "document" text is:
in \in {note} [foo]
in my pdf-output this appears as : "in note 2" This is not reasonable and desired (it should not appear). Was it a "slip of the pen" on your side or any purpose, if yes, which one? All the best and Goutgaun! joachim -- Kreimer-de Fries