Insert a Comment as a special footnote, marked by author and with the option to hide

Question

Well, I am writing my PhD. In this phase I am passing the nearly finished text for revision. I want to give it with certain comments aimed to the tutor, and hide them and show another corpus of comments in the version for my girlfriend who is checking the style. After review, I want to pass it to other people deciding which versions of annotations are visible. And I want to have this annotations as special footnotes (with a own color per apparatus), but without interfering the normal footnotes. I need them as footnotes and not inline nor margin because I don't want it to interrupt the fluid reading.

Resumed: I need a form of customizable (in style and presence) specific footnotes, which don't interfere with the standard footnoting.
I checked the packages:

• Manyfoot, Bigfoot: do allow special footnote apparatus (declare new footnoteA) with independent numbering and even markformat, but (besides that I'm still struggling with the size and color of the footnote text itself) not the option to hide them. Maybe I could hide it with \newcommand{\footnoteA}[1]{\ignorespaces}??
• Comment: does allow hide, but not footnote, nor specific one.
• latexdiff: does allow different versions = colors and hiding, but no relation with own commenting, footnote diversity/flexibility, etc.
• Changes: does allow specific notes (allows me to declare an author, this means, gives a color and thus can hide the corresponding apparatus), but not the possibility to just ad an remark. It forces me to use the commands 'added', etc. This commands mark the text INLINE, what I don't want: I just want the colored remark in the footnote.
• trackchanges: does allow specific notes for author, thus also deactivating them, does allow put them as footnote, so I can have different styles of footnotes, but I think it has a Bug: it interferes with the normal footnotes = it changes the normal footnote marks into its own mark.
• FIXme: does hiding, gives me too the option to tweak it into specific authors, but also this mixes up with the numbering of footnotes.

Would be grateful for suggestions. Another package, a certain combination, a tweak of a package? or a form to avoid the bug in trackchanges?

Answer 1

There are some different things going on here and I did not entirely grasp what your purpose is after the review by your tutor and girlfriend.

I will start with the comment part. Then you need to be able to write comments and you want at least two different sets that can be turned on and off. For the first part, how to write comments, one alternative is with pdfcomment.sty. The other is that you want to turn on and off the sets, which can be solved with conditioning the output using \newif.

As I understand the footnote part you want a separate set of footnotes that are numbered individually and the text colored. The \hl command from soul.sty can be used to mark with color.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{pdfcomment}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}
%%
\newif\iftutorcomment\tutorcommentfalse                  \tutorcommenttrue
\newif\ifgirlfriendcomment\girlfriendcommentfalse        \girlfriendcommenttrue
%%
\def\tutorcomment#1{%
  \iftutorcomment
  \pdfmargincomment[author=Author,color=green,icon=Comment]{#1}
  \fi
}
\def\girlfriendcomment#1{%
  \ifgirlfriendcomment
  \pdfmargincomment[author=Author,color=red,icon=Key]{#1}
  \fi
}
%%%%%%
\newcounter{reviewfootnote}
\def\thedefaultfootnote{\arabic{footnote}}
\def\thereviewfootnote{\alph{reviewfootnote}}
\def\reviewfootnote#1{%
  \let\thefootnote\thereviewfootnote
  \refstepcounter{reviewfootnote}%
  \footnotemark[\arabic{reviewfootnote}]%
  \footnotetext[\arabic{reviewfootnote}]{\hl{#1}}%
  \let\thefootnote\thedefaultfootnote
}
%%\def\reviewfootnote#1{} %% Uncomment to get rid of review footnotes
%%%%%%
\begin{document}
\section{Thesis}
\tutorcomment{Test of tutor comment}
\lipsum[1]
\girlfriendcomment{Test of girlfriend comment}
\lipsum[2-3]

test1\footnote{test of first footnote} 
test2\reviewfootnote{Test of reviewfootnote}
test3\footnote{test of second footnote}
test4\reviewfootnote{Test of reviewfootnote}
\end{document}

You can turn on and off the comments by commenting the switches \tutorcommenttrue and \girlfriendcommenttrue.

In the documentation of pdfcommentyou can find a lot of tuning for the comments. However, since the comment is controlled at the pdf output it will look different in different viewers, not to mention paper printed versions. But you can use the same switching for other comments, e.g. margin comments.

I think that you can find some more features for footnotes in the footmisc.sty packet.