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From: dougcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop,comp.text
Subject: Re: Multilingual text annotation
Message-ID: <2982@csv.viccol.edu.au>
Date: 16 Nov 89 04:53:18 GMT
References: <9981@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Followup-To: comp.text.desktop
Organization: Computer Services, Victoria College, Melbourne
Lines: 45

In article <9981@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, JEFF@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Jeffrey Perry) writes:
>     I am trying to help a user select an IBM-compatible product that
> will permit him to create a lengthy scholarly multi-language work
> involving the extensive annotation of whole texts.  The texts are going
> to be in Spanish, the annotations mostly in French; the ultimate placement
> of the annotations must be flexible, i.e. the user is not sure yet if
> he wants to display the original text as the main body of the printed
> book, with the annotations as footnotes/endnotes, or adopt a multi-column
> format (column 1 = text, column 2 = annotations), or even use an alter-
> nating line arrangement, where lines of annotations appear above the
> text they refer to (and presumably in a different typeface).  It does
> have to work on an IBM-compatible platform, otherwise the user is willing
> to try anything.  Any ideas?
>                             Jeff Perry
>                             CIT/Princeton University
>                             JEFF@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU

LaTeX is an obvious candidate here.

Here is one way you might go:

Write the paper with the text of each annotation in an \annotate command,
e.g.:

This is some Spanish text. \annotate{this is an annotation in French} This
is some more text.  And yet more text going on and on. \annotate{This is
the second annotation}.

The resultant paper can then formated in numerous ways:

For example, to get footnotes, use a style file containing:

   \def\annotate\footnote

To get the two column style, use a style file that defines a largish right
margin, and:

   \def\annotate\marginpar

And to get annotations inserted below lines, something like:

   \def\annotate#1\vadjust{\parbox[t]{\textwidth}{\strut #1\strut}}

However, just at the moment, getting them inserted *above* lines escapes me. 
Anybody got any ideas?