I'm still trying to get marginal notes to work with columns. I've been experimenting with columnsets, but I still get the marginal notes popping up on the wrong side of their column, and overprinting the other column, not printing in the margin. I thought that this though, would be an opportunity to attempt two column text with three column footnotes (I'd read of other people in the archive who found this impossible in the past). I tried: %columns \definecolumnset[body][n=2,distance=20pt] \definecolumnset[footnotes][n=3,distance=10pt] %footnotes \newcommand{\colprefoot}{\stopcolumnset\startcolumnset[footnotes]} \newcommand{\colpostfoot}{\stopcolumnset\startcolumnset[body]} \setupfootnotedefinition[location=serried,distance=0.5em] \newcommand{\fnstyle}{\switchtobodyfont[12pt]\addff{su}} \setupnote[footnote][numbercommand=\fnstyle,textcommand=\fnstyle\tfa,before=\colprefoot,after=\colpostfoot] and variations on it, expecting to switch to three columns after the balanced two column body and back again after the footnotes. The results were very disappointing: -- The footnotes are still in two columns. -- At least, they now flow from one column to the next, though neither they nor the body columns are balanced. -- The hrule separating them from the body is now always absent---but one appears at the top of the very first page! I'm beginning to think that columns with marginal notes and footnotes in a different number of columns can't be done.

If I have a two-column text with margins on either side, is there a way for \inmargin{} or something like it to place text in the margin next to the column where it occurs?  I haven't been able to avoid it overprinting the text in the opposite column.

I tried using margin blocks but I couldn't get anywhere with them.  Even:

\startmarginblock test \stopmarginblock

produces no output.  And there is a new wrinkle: \setupinmargin[align=outer] ruins my footnotes.  It causes the footnote marks that occur before the notes themselves to appear one margin-length left of where they should be, even if the overprint text.