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I have a student manual for a set of chemistry labs. Over the years the instructors have made their own annotations and other pointers/observations. I have now collated these and wish to produce an instructor version of the manual.

I wish to keep the exact same pagination and layout of the student version but to insert non-numbered pages with the instructor tips at the correct position on the facing page.

I could do this manually and then just physically insert the instructor pages into the document before binding, there are only 15 instructor manuals to be produced anyhow! (400 student manuals).

However, can this be done automagically as it is easier to insert tips and tricks at the point of use in the raw .tex file?

I don't have a MWE as this is conceptual but a pseudo code follows:

\chapter{Oxidation of a ketone}
\begin{procedure}%enumitem environment
\item Weigh out \SI{0.59}{\g} of xxx salt. \instr{In reality you are measuring out \SI{0.04}{\mole} of the salt. Depending on whether it is the pentahydrate or the heptahydrate the mass may change}% this comment is placed on the facing page.
\item Boil a beaker of water. \instr{Put the water boiling at start of lab! It takes time to boil.}
:
:
\end{procedure}

Does something already exist for this? A special case of todonotes?

Apologies for vagueness of MWE.

Leeser
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  • How can it not affect the layout of the pages when every other insertion will flip the following student pages from odd to even or vice-versa. Please provide a compilable MWE. Nobody can take that code and start working with it without having to guess a whole bunch of things about your document which you could more easily and more accurately show us. – cfr Jul 19 '16 at 21:37
  • Indeed your 'MWE' is very vague. The problem is that inserting the instruction content shifts the page. Perhaps, one can produce a two - run example, with some xr usage –  Jul 19 '16 at 21:38
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    It also really isn't clear what is wanted. Is the student version one-sided and the instructor version two-sided? What if the annotations for a page exceed a page in length? What if there are no annotations for a given page. What if ...? – cfr Jul 19 '16 at 21:40
  • Agreed, not very clear! The student version is one sided, instructor version two sided. So far the number of instructor comments per page is limited, a max of 5 comments, the total length is less than one page (so far). If no annotations insert blank page. was more or less thinking of a comments page interspersed with the student version. Keeping the page numbers the same was so that the instructor can say "On page 23 in your manual...." Maybe pdfpages is the best way for me to go at the moment until I clarify my needs. – Leeser Jul 19 '16 at 22:39
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    do you use footnotes in your document if no one can change the output routine to insert footnotes in even pages. – touhami Jul 19 '16 at 22:51
  • example http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/267029/margin-note-on-adjacent-page – touhami Jul 19 '16 at 23:11

1 Answers1

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I think, maybe, you are looking for the versonotes package, based on the fact that student version is one-sided and instructor version two sided.

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