Margin Notes

[hlb]

I write mostly fiction, and often need to go through a manuscript and check for continuity, factual consistency (was that mole on the right or the left side of her mouth?), etc. No doubt those who predominantly write other materials would have use for margin notes (cf. http://jerssoftwarehut.com/AboutJNW.shtml#mnotes for an idea of what I have in mind) as well, no? Basically I'm thinking little notes that would be visible in the margins (duh), maybe color-coded, and persistently visible unlike the 'discolored-text-click-on-me-and-view-me-in-a-separate-pane' horrors MS Word inflicts on its users.

[Stephen Still]

There was some discussion a while ago (more than a year if memory serves) about Mellel's whole system for tracking changes and comments. At the time, there was a lot of talk about setting up track changes to look and feel more like traditional proofing than Word's ugly and often very difficult to read solution.

This is obviously tangential to your requirement, but I still think it would be cool.

[joewiz]

'Marginalia' has long been a topic of discussion - but this vote is certainly welcome! Searching through the forums, I located a post by Ori from almost exactly a year ago:

In the pre-[forum-]crash era, there was a lively discussion about features people wanted to see in Mellel.

As mentioned, I've followed the discussion and compiled a list of those features, divided into improvements and new features, and ranked by the number of people requesting them.

The list:

New features

1 Track changes and notes (17 requests)
2 LinkBack support, work with other apps. (11 requests)
3 Marginalia and other additions to notes (10 requests)
4 XML format (10 requests)
5 Cross-reference, hyperlinks (8 requests)
6 Split screen, display improved (6 requests)
7 More like FrameMaker (3 requests)
8 Scripting (2 Request)
9 Indexing

Improving existing features:
1 Improved graphics support (wrap, drag) (11 requests)
2 Improved tables (10 requests)
3 Improved Find (9 requests)
4 Character style options (OpenType, all-caps, 3rd font, ad hoc) (9 requests)
5 Bibliography integration (6 requests)
6 More flexible auto-titles (especially editing) (6 requests)
7 Improved export and import incl. PDF (6 requests)
8 Improved outline (print, search, entry) (5 requests)
9 More Cocoa/traditional GUI (4 requests)
10 Improved lists (3 requests)

It's interesting to note that Track Changes and Marginalia were at spots 1 and 3 back then. We can see how others have been taken care of, how others have been promised in the near term, etc.

Vote away! p.s. the post was http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php? ... marginalia

And there 90-odd messages matching 'marginalia' on the old mailing list http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/redl ... ndows-1252

[lbas]

Hope this would cover something like paragraph numbers in the margins of the finished work.
Woodson

[matthias]

Hope this would cover something like paragraph numbers in the margins of the finished work.
Woodson

I agree, this would be a very welcome feature. I work a lot on textbooks which usually require paragraph numbering. For the time being, I insert them by hand.

matthias