How to add todo notes?

Question

Is there a simple way to add todo notes to LaTeX documents ?

I would like to have these notes in red in the generated pdf and a simple syntax to write them.

Answer 1

There is a todonotes package that makes adding notes easy enough. They appear in the margins by default.

A simpler version, if you just want red text in the body of the text as notes is just to define a command \myworries that makes its argument red.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand\myworries[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}}
\begin{document}
Here is some text.
\myworries{But I'm worried about the text}
\end{document}

And then if you want to hide the comments, just add the line \renewcommand\myworries[1]{} below the \newcommand. This will hide all your notes.

A third option is to use LaTeX's own \marginpar command to put a paragraph in the margin. It's not great, but for little notes to yourself it's adequate.

Alan Munn, in the comments, has made me aware of another package todo that seems to be simpler than todonotes but a little more powerful than \marginpar. Though I've not used it so I don't know for sure.

Answer 2

The todonotes package mentioned above can be customized to show various types of notes. It is also possible to create a summary of all notes, for example at the end of the document. Here is an example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}                     % Dummytext
\usepackage{xargs}                      % Use more than one optional parameter in a new commands
\usepackage[pdftex,dvipsnames]{xcolor}  % Coloured text etc.
% 
\usepackage[colorinlistoftodos,prependcaption,textsize=tiny]{todonotes}
\newcommandx{\unsure}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=red,backgroundcolor=red!25,bordercolor=red,#1]{#2}}
\newcommandx{\change}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=blue,backgroundcolor=blue!25,bordercolor=blue,#1]{#2}}
\newcommandx{\info}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=OliveGreen,backgroundcolor=OliveGreen!25,bordercolor=OliveGreen,#1]{#2}}
\newcommandx{\improvement}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=Plum,backgroundcolor=Plum!25,bordercolor=Plum,#1]{#2}}
\newcommandx{\thiswillnotshow}[2][1=]{\todo[disable,#1]{#2}}
%
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty}
\todo[inline]{The original todo note withouth changed colours.\newline Here's another line.}
\lipsum[11]\unsure{Is this correct?}\unsure{I'm unsure about also!}
\lipsum[11]\change{Change this!}
\lipsum[11]\info{This can help me in chapter seven!}
\lipsum[11]\improvement{This really needs to be improved!\newline\newline What was I thinking?!}
\lipsum[11]
\thiswillnotshow{This is hidden since option `disable' is chosen!}
\improvement[inline]{The following section needs to be rewritten!}
\lipsum[11]
\newpage
\listoftodos[Notes]
\end{document}

This outputs the following text with notes:

And here is the summary page:

Notice the \thiswillnotshow note which is disabled using the disable option in the header. This can be used to turn off each type of note globally. Todonotes can also be used in the caption of tables and figures, though only provided that the inline option is used with these notes.

Answer 3

see package cooltooltips. When the cursor is over "This text" the blue window pops up.

The source code for this example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{cooltooltips}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\def\cool{\texttt{cool}}
\begin{document}

The \cool\ package enables a document to contain hyperlinks that pop
up a brief tooltip when the mouse moves over them and also open a
small window containing additional text.  \cool\ works only with
pdf\LaTeX\@.  Furthermore, the tooltips that \cool\ produces are much
less cool when viewed under older versions of Acrobat~($<7.0$) or the
current version of xpdf~(3.00) because they don't pop up the extra,
small window.  
\cooltooltip[0 0 1]{Example}{This is an example of a cool tooltip.  
Pretty cool, eh?}{http://www.ctan.org/}{Visit CTAN on the Web}{This text\strut} 
%
is an example of a cool tooltip (assuming
you're viewing this document with a sufficiently capable \textsc{pdf}
reader).  Move your mouse pointer over it and watch what happens.
Then, click on the link.  If your \textsc{pdf} reader is properly
configured it should launch a Web browser and send it to the
\textsc{ctan} home page.

\end{document}

Answer 4

Another possibility is the fixme package. It supports several ways of outputting the notes. You can have them directly inside the text, in the page margin, or as a list at the end of the document. You can even combine the methods.

It comes with support for different authors and different levels of severity. "Notes" and "comments" will simply be ignored if you compile the document with final option, while "errors" will produce compilation errors. In draft mode they will all be printed with different markup. Every author gets his/her own prefix, that is added to the note.

Answer 5

To avoid the risk to submit the paper with the todo notes, I throw a warning, so that each todo appears as a warning when I compile. The command is

\newcommand{\todo}[1]{\textcolor{red}{TODO: #1}\PackageWarning{TODO:}{#1!}}

Answer 6

The todonotes package suggested by MLC has colour built in. The \todo command can take several options, including color. This voids the need for making own commands if you just want to quickly colour your notes. The list of options can be found here: PDF

Examples:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{todonotes}
\begin{document}
\todo{default to-do}This is text that needs some attention.\\
\todo[inline]{Default inline to-do}
\todo[inline, color=green]{Green inline to-do}
\todo[inline, color=green!40]{Light green inline to-do}
\todo[inline, color=red]{Red inline to-do}
\todo[inline, color=red!40]{Light red inline to-do}
\end{document}

Output:

Answer 7

If you want the notes directly in PDF you may want to use PDF annotations with the pdfcomment package.

Take a look at the screenshots

• How to annotate PDF files generated by pdflatex?
• pdftooltip from pdfcomment package: Using LaTeX code in tooltip

Answer 8

https://github.com/kkew3/todo-tex

A Python3 solution that parses TODO notes in LaTeX source comments and outputs them on the terminal.

Sample from the GitHub page:

% myfile.tex
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Superchiasmatic neucleus is the primary clock % continue later: forgot what to write now
\end{document}

$ todo-tex -lm prints

./myfile.tex
    [TODO] line 3: forgot what to write now

Supported TODO tags are todo, TODO, question, problem, continue here, continue later, continue ....

That list can easily be extended by editing the python script.

Answer 9

Check out easy-todo on http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/easy-todo

Answer 10

This adds the todo message into the PDF and also shows up as a warning during compilation. It can be used without arguments or with an optional message.

\usepackage{xparse}

\makeatletter
\DeclareDocumentCommand\todo{g}{%
\def\@message{\IfNoValueTF{#1}{TODO}{TODO: #1}}
\textbf{\textcolor[HTML]{FF8811}{\@message}}
\@latex@warning{\@message}{}{}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

Foo: \todo

Bar: \todo{message}

\end{document}