/latex-commenting

A LaTeX package for commenting multi-author documents

Primary LanguageTeX

The commenting LaTeX package

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This package attempts to provide a simple and flexible set of macros to typeset (and hide) comments and remarks which are supposed to be read only by the authors of a multi-author document, during the process of writing and reviewing it. It provides macros for printing comments inline or in the margin, giving visual hints of their location and author. All the comments are typeset only when in draft mode. Pdf's native comments are also somehow optionally supported through the pdfcomment package.

Package options are provided to globally change aspects of the appearance of the comments and the use of more sophisticated features (color, pdfcomment, margin notes). This is especially useful, for instance, when switching from a normal layout to a two columns one: setting the nompar option would suppress any margin note and would include all the comments inline.

Copyright (c) 2012-2015, Emanuele D'Osualdo.

Released under the LaTeX Project Public License.

Basic Usage

To use the package, simply put it in your path and write in the preamble

\usepackage{commenting}

When setting up a multi-author document, you can define authors' names, nicknames and colors (in the preamble):

\declareauthor{fz}{Frank}{blue}
\declareauthor{jlp}{Jean-Luc}{green!30!black}

Optionally you can change the base style for the comments:

\setcommentstyle{\sffamily}

or the style of a particular author:

\setauthorstyle{fz}{\itshape}

Then you can use the commenting macros in the body:

\comment[fz]{Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny}        % a comment from Frank
\comment[fz](11/04){Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny} % a comment with date

Other macros include \todo, \annot, \changed, \draftnote.

Please note that these macros will output something only when in draft mode. To make them work when in final mode set the local draft mode in the \usepackage line.

One of the cool features of commenting is its ability to selectively turn comments on and off with the macros

\onlyauthors{fz,jlp}
\NoCommentsBefore{12/04}
\NoCommentsAfter{20/04}
\ExcludeNonDatedComments

To only display comments by a subset of the authors, or comments within a temporal span.

Read the documentation for more details on all the options and macros.