Create three column layout with large text in the middle and annotations in right column

Question

I am trying to create a page layout which looks like this quick sketch I have done with Apple Pages:

In the left column there should be some headings of the paragraphs printed in the middle column. The main problem is that I need to annotate some words in each paragraph and those annotations should appear in the same line as the word in the right column.

I have experimented with a normal table and tabular as well as the multicol package but with little success. I don't know how to create a paragraph in the middle column and annotating some words in that paragraph in the right column so that the annotations are printed in the same row as the annotated word.

Do you have any ideas how to tex this layout?

Answer 1

One way is to use tikz to position the text you want to be aligned with the words in the paragraphs. In the MWE below you mark the text with \Annotate{annotation}{text}, and I have highlighted the marked text in red to make it easier to see and the annotation is shown in blue.. The data is created using a tabular which makes it easy to create the vertical rules (if desired):

Notes:

• The showframe package was used just to show the page margins. It is not needed in your actual use case.
• This does require two runs. First one to determine the locations, and the second to place the annotation.
• Depending on the width of the annotations, you can adjust the width of the table. It should be possible to use something like tabularx so that you don't have to guess the width of the table.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{showframe}
\usepackage{tikz,tikzpagenodes}

\tikzset{Node Style/.style={blue, font=\bfseries}}
\newcommand{\Annotate}[2]{%
    \textcolor{red}{#2}%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[overlay,remember picture] 
        \coordinate (Location) at (0,0 -| current page text area.east);
        \node [anchor=east, Node Style] at (Location) {\tiny#1};
    \end{tikzpicture}%
}

\newcommand{\TextA}{%
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed id massa ligula. 
\Annotate{Suspense?}{Suspendisse} finibus tempus arcu ut blandit. Curabitur dolor dolor, varius ut pharetra et, luctus eu sem. 
\par
Integer convallis lacus \Annotate{erat}{erat}, id hendrerit mauris molestie quis. Ut non suscipit ligula.%
}

\newcommand{\TextB}{%
Integer quis mattis est. Ut sagittis lorem vel risus aliquet, non tincidunt arcu hendrerit. 
\Annotate{Fuschia?}{Fusce} ultrices lectus ac auctor venenatis. Etiam convallis eu ipsum ut scelerisque. Morbi mattis egestas elit eu tincidunt. Curabitur ultrices \Annotate{US Dollar?}{dolor} ut elit molestie feugiat. Quisque et mattis diam, vitae semper ipsum. Proin in ultricies lorem. Mauris et ligula vitae dolor tristique dictum eget vel mauris. Vestibulum tempor eleifend maximus.%
}%

\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabular}{@{}l |p{8.0cm}|}
    Title     & \TextA \\[1.0ex]
    Sub title & \TextB \\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}