[comp.text] LaTeX marginpar problem.

conway@hpdtl.HP.COM (Daniel F. Conway) (10/20/88)

Occasionally I will have a \marginpar command that gets put in the wrong side
margin.  If it is to be in the right margin, and instead gets put in the left,
there is not enough room, since the right margin is wider than the left.  The
sizing algorithm in LaTeX sets it up for the right margin, assuming that it
has enough room.  When I look at it with xdvi, it is all crowded together in
the left margin; when I print it, characters are overlapped and wrapped around
somehow into the middle of the page.  The results are totally unreadable.

The macro that I am calling when this happens is:


\def\draftnote#1
{
  \ifdraft
    {\marginpar{\tiny #1}}
  \fi
}

Has anyone else seen this problem?  It only happens at the top of a page, and
may be related to nearby figures, but it is not repeatable enough that I can
say for certain.  I can't find anything about this in Lamport's book, and
there are no error messages or warnings containing the offending text, or any
messages at all on the page with the error, or on immediately adjacent pages.

Dan Conway
Hewlett-Packard
Palo Alto, CA
dan_conway@hplabs.hp.com