Document Classes ⇒ memoir class: get ragged marginalia?

[magister]

I'm using memoir to produce a book with lots of margin paragraphs and side captions. I'd prefer that these elements be ragged on the outside and flush on the inside (e.g., on a recto page they would be flush left and ragged right). I thought that was the default, but I'm getting fully justified paragraphs. A search of the memoir manual has not enlightened me. I'd appreciate any help.

David

[gmedina]

Hi David,

in the following code I defined the \ragmarpar command that will typeset raggedright margin notes on an odd page and raggedleft margin notes on an even page. I used the \RaggedRight and \RaggedLeft commands from the ragged2e package to allow hyphenation inside the margin notes.

Code: Select all

\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to automatically generate some text

\newcounter{pl}
\newcommand\ragmarpar[1]{%
   \stepcounter{pl}\label{pl-\thepl}%
   \ifthenelse{\isodd{\pageref{pl-\thepl}}}%
    {\marginpar{\RaggedRight #1}}
    {\marginpar{\RaggedLeft #1}}
}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]
\ragmarpar{\lipsum[1]}
\lipsum[1-4]
\ragmarpar{\lipsum[1]}
\lipsum[1-4]

\end{document}

[magister]

Thank you! This works perfectly in my document. I'm not much of a programmer, but I'll see if I can use your model to get side captions ragged also. Thanks too for the reference to ragged2e package; I wasn't familiar with it.

David

[gmedina]

You are welcome.

...I'll see if I can use your model to get side captions ragged also...

The caption package implements this option. Please refer to the package documentation (Section 2.2 "Justification", pages 8 and 9).

Additionally, the memoir class provides the \captionstyle command that allows you to obtain ragged captions; (see the manual, page 188).

[magister]

Additionally, the memoir class provides the \captionstyle command

Yes, that's one thing I really like about memoir--it does many things that eliminate the need for separate packages (with possible conflicts). I used the caption package in the past but rarely need it now that I use memoir for projects of any length. My notion that memoir could do ragged right margin pars was probably misremembered info about ragged right captions. Back to the manual!

David