Add colour to margin notes

Question

I'm using LyX with XeTeX and the KOMA-script article class. I'm trying secsty and fontspec for the first time.

I'm trying to do a unique layout with large outer margins. On some pages I will put key points or quotes from the main text in the outer margin.

I assumed the best way is to use margin notes. It's important for me to customise the look of these notes - specific colours and font sizes.

Is there a way to change the colour/size of all margin notes in the latex preamble? Is there a completely different solution to what I want to do?

Answer 1

First of all you should load "mparhack", that fixes some problems with marginal notes. Then you should define your command for inserting marginal notes:

\newcommand{\annotation}[1]{\marginpar{#1}}

or maybe

\newcommand{\annotation}[1]{%
  \marginpar{\small\itshape\color{blue}#1}}

if you want to experiment with color. It will be easier for you to change the formatting of all marginal notes without going into the details of the implementation of \marginpar.

For XeLaTeX, if the main font has the Color feature activated, a different trick should be used:

\setmainfont[Color=4C4C4C,Ligatures=TeX]{Linux Libertine O}
\newfontfamily{\annfont}[Color=0000FF,Ligatures=TeX]{Linux Libertine O}

\newcommand{\annotation}[1]{%
  \marginpar{\annfont\small\itshape#1}}

In other words, we duplicate the main font family with a different color. If other families are used in marginal notes, they should be duplicated as well. If there is a small number of marginal notes, also

\newcommand{\annotation}[1]{%
  \marginpar{\addfontfeature{Color=0000FF}\small\itshape#1}}

can be used, without duplicating the font families; note, however, that this causes a big overhead, since a new font families will be defined on the fly for each marginal note.

Answer 2

Apart from redefining the \marginpar command, as shown by @egreg, you can have a look at the tufte class which provides a fully customized environment for article and book, featuring large margins where small figures, references, and notes go right away. Included is a redefinition of margin note (in fact everything, including footnotes, are considered as numbered or unumbered "sidenote"), which looks like this:

(Snapshot grabbed from the handout example file.)

You can customize the \marginnote command as you want. For example, using @egreg's example, we would just put the following command in the preamble:

\setmarginnotefont{\small\itshape\color{blue}}

which produces the desired effect:

Answer 3

Try using the todonotes package. It does all that for you: you just have to try to forget that it does that for the purpose of inserting "todo" items. Think of these items in your terms, and ignore the package terminology.