Problems using marginpar to locate commands in the pdf file

Question

I'm a copy editor. For editing reasons I find usefull to spot certain commands used by authors (or by myself in the editing process) directly in the .pdf (or .dvi) file (I know that I can highlight them in my text editor etc., but I have my reasons to do it in this way).

For example, sometimes I need to spot pagebreak commands like \pagebreak, \newpage, \clearpage etc. These commands do not produce a "visible" output in the .pdf (or .dvi) file.

I do something like:

latex "\AtBeginDocument{\let\Oldpagebreak\pagebreak \
\renewcommand{\pagebreak}{\marginpar{\colorbox{red}{pagebreak}}\Oldpagebreak}} \input{file.tex}"

doing so I can pass the string:

\let\Oldpagebreak\pagebreak
\renewcommand{\pagebreak}{\marginpar{\colorbox{red}{pagebreak}}\Oldpagebreak}

to the LaTeX engine without changing the source file.

This is what I get in the .pdf (or .dvi) file:

My problem is that \marginpar has some issues used in this way.

I have warnings like:

LaTeX Warning: Marginpar on page 23 moved.

If the command is used in a floating environment I got the error:
```
! LaTeX Error: Not in outer par mode.
```

My question is how can I avoid these warnings/errors?

Note. I'm opend to other ideas. The most important thing is that the general layout of the document (except for the commands revelation) must remain unchanged.

Edit after the campa and daleif comments.

I tried with the marginnote package. It solved the warnings/error issues.

This is a MWE (for convenience I put the commands in the premble):

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\let\Oldsmallskip\smallskip
\renewcommand{\smallskip}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{smallskip}}\Oldsmallskip}
\let\Oldmedskip\medskip
\renewcommand{\medskip}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{medskip}}\Oldmedskip}
\let\Oldbigskip\bigskip
\renewcommand{\bigskip}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{bigskip}}\Oldbigskip}
\let\Oldpagebreak\pagebreak
\renewcommand{\pagebreak}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{pagebreak}}\Oldpagebreak}
\let\Oldnewpage\newpage
\renewcommand{\newpage}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{newpage}}\Oldnewpage}
\let\Oldclearpage\clearpage
\renewcommand{\clearpage}{\marginnote{\colorbox{red}{clearpage}}\Oldclearpage}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\centering
  \includegraphics[width=.3\linewidth]{example-image}
\medskip
\caption{Example image.}
\end{figure}
\section{Section 1}
\blindtext
\medskip
\section{Section 2}
\blindtext
\pagebreak
\section{Section 3}
\blindtext
\end{document}

A diffpdf didn't show any problem:

I'm not sure that the second problem is a rel problem. Something like \clearpage should never appear in a floating environment anyway. Maybe the package marginnote could help, but it would be really helpful to have some document which actually displays the problems. (BTW: I'm not the downvoter, though I think the question has some margin for improvement.) — campa, Jun 24 '20 at 14:49
I tend to use tikz and global positioning instead. Of course then you need to manually move stuff out of the way but so be it. If the original is really bad I'll include it as the left hand side of a landscape A3 and write some very long notes. — daleif, Jun 24 '20 at 14:50
try package marginnote with the macro of the same name. It uses non floating margin pars. — user187802, Jun 24 '20 at 14:52
As campa mentions, I also have good experiences with marginnote, for me through the fixme package. Again this does not move if there are several notes in the same place, but it is actually easy to add an extra option to \fxnote to manually move a note up and down. — daleif, Jun 24 '20 at 14:52
Thus this \fxnote setup is my most used copyediting tool. The tikz and global position I use if I only have access to the PDF. — daleif, Jun 24 '20 at 14:53
@campa I improved the question. Your comment solved my issue. — Gabriele, Jun 24 '20 at 16:13
@campa. I you like you can post your comment as an answer so i can accept it. — Gabriele, Jun 25 '20 at 09:20
What about denoting this as duplicate of \marginpar inside figure environment fails? — campa, Jun 25 '20 at 09:54

Problems using marginpar to locate commands in the pdf file

0 Answers0