Hiding marginal notes

Question

While writing I tend to add a lot of notes using \marginpar. Is there a way to hide them before printing a final version?

score 14 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 05 '18 at 16:44

There a number of methods you can use. One way is to use yet another package such as the todoor you can simply define a command as shown below, which will perhaps also be more semantically correct for notes.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum,xcolor}

\def\noteson{%
\gdef\note##1{\mbox{}\marginpar[$\leftarrow$ ##1]{%
    \color{blue}$\leftarrow$ ##1}}}
\gdef\notesoff{\gdef\note##1{}}
\noteson
% Comment line above and uncomment to hide notes
%\notesoff
\begin{document}
\note{Adams disagrees on this issue.} This is some lipsum text
\lipsum[1-7]
\note{Check the reference out.} This is some lipsum text
\end{document}

You can switch them on and off using \notesoff or \noteson.

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If you want to use the todo package check the post How to add todo notes?

I believe it should be \gdef\notesoff{\gdef\note##1{}} or it wouldn't gobble its argument, shouldn't it? — cgnieder, Mar 20 '12 at 23:40

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '11 at 22:35

7

You could use the comment package (http://www.ctan.org/pkg/comment). A little example (change \includecomment{note} to \excludecomment{note} to hide the margin note):

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{comment}

\includecomment{note}

\begin{document}

text text text text
\begin{note}
\marginpar{a margin note}
\end{note}
text text text

\end{document}

answered Mar 09 '11 at 22:35

Gonzalo Medina

505,128

This is a great package. The only slight downside is having to surround all marginpar calls with an environment. – Marco Craveiro Oct 01 '21 at 16:07

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 09 '11 at 22:26

6

Just redefine the command to do nothing:

\renewcommand{\marginpar}[2][]{}

answered Mar 09 '11 at 22:26

Andrey Vihrov

22,325

5

I wouldn't redefine marginpar this way, as it may break other legitimate marginpars. – yannisl Mar 09 '11 at 22:30

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 21 '12 at 05:58

I've been taking two approaches - one being to use the opt package, which ties output to tags that can be toggled:

\newcommand{\marpar}[1]{\opt{note}{\marginpar{\fnsize #1}\index{TODO}}}

Another way to suppress output of those modified marginpars if the opt environment cannot be used would be to hide the \marginpar inside a macro that never gets called.

\newcommand{\marpar}[1] {{\newcommand{\lastunprintedcommand}{\marginpar #1}}}

Hiding marginal notes

4 Answers4