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Coding an albatross.
OK, I'm probably insane, but I'd still like to know if there is any reasonable to way to get something like this (see attached pic) in epub. It's Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and it has got all those little sidenotes on the left that explain what's going on for those who can't be bothered to read the poem proper. Anyway, it looks very neat on the printed page.
The problem with coding it in epub is the varying length of those sidenotes. Some of them run for longer than a stanza, others are shorter.
In the earlier posts in this thread I have found two basic patterns for coding something like this, let's call them the float- and the table-approach. I've tried both, and have run into different kinds of problems with both:
- using the float-approach, it is impossible to get a regular straight left edge of the poem proper; lines will start too far to the left when the left-floating span is short, or too far to the right when it is long and gets close to the next one. I fiddled with inserted line breaks to adjust the length of the span, but the effect of course breaks down immediately if you change the font-size.
- the table approach (or the "fake table" Jellby suggested in post #5) works beautifully regarding the edges, but I have to start a new table with each new sidenote (or in the end for each stanza probably), and ADE starts a new page after each one, which of course I don't want. So it would solve all my problems if there was a way to tell ADE not to do that.
I know there are some real experts here - can it be done?
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