Showlabels

Put the names of \labels into the margins of a draft document.

Version 1.6, 2006 May 26.

This class option introduces no new commands, it just helps you keep track of all the labels by putting the name of the new label into the margin whenever either the \label command is used, or an equation is automatically numbered (by replacing the internal \@eqnnum command). There are therefore no usage instructions. You invoke this package with the command \usepackage{showlabels} in the preamble, and you may give the options [inner] or [outer] (the default) to have the labels placed in the inner or outer margin of the text.

The package will also work in the presence of the [twocolumn] option. In this case, the options [inner] and [outer] will be ignored, and the label will be placed in the nearer margin.

1.6, 2006 May 26

The \showlabels command will now work with commands (such as \cite or \includegraphics) which take an optional argument.

1.5a, 2005 March 17

Defined \showlabelfont using \ttfamily rather than \tt (I'd avoided doing this before to avoid a seemingly pointless incompatibility with LaTeX 2.09, but (a) I imagine the package is incompatible with that for other reasons, and (b) it's really not worth the hassle...).

1.5, 2004 October 8

Added \showlabelfont and \showlabelsetlabel commands, allowing customisation of the printed labels. Added and documented options [final], [draft] (the former makes this package do nothing; the latter is the default behaviour).

1.4a, 2003 January 28

Acquired the [left] and [right] options, and fixed a bug which affected \label commands in captions.

1.4, 2001 July 24

Became (more) compatible with the wrapfig package. Also, I added the \showlabels command, to have the package display references to commands other than \label (\cite and \ref are obvious ones), and an [inline] option to have labels (etc.) displayed inline where possible, rather than always in the margin.

1.3e, 2001 May 30

Became compatible with the hyperref package in particular, and in general with other packages which themselves modify the \label command. This will work, however, only if the showlabels package is loaded after other packages which do this. Notwithstanding Sebastian Rahtz's excellent general advice on this, showlabels should indeed be loaded after hyperref.

1.1, 2001?

Modified to conform to the slightly different mechanism that amsmath uses to produce equation numbers. I don't habitually use amsmath, so I won't discover any bugs or weaknesses with its support here, and I'd consequently be glad to be informed of any that appear. Do note that the \usepackage{showlabels} command must appear after the \usepackage{amsmath} if it is to detect that you are using the amsmath package. Note also that, since these additions appeared, AMS-LaTeX and the amstex package seem to have been declared `obsolete' in favour of the amsmath package. This package now claims conformance with the amsmath package alone, though it will probably work with older versions in fact.

Compatibility and problems

For reasonably obvious reasons, this package will not work at all well with the multicol package, and for possibly less obvious reasons, it won't work with the [leqno] option either (at some point it should be modified to at least recognise and warn of the conflict in either case). The package can occasionally place labels in the wrong margins, near the top of a page -- see the documentation for a discussion of this.

Download and installation

Download the file showlabels-1.6.tar.gz or showlabels-1.6.zip and unpack it.

Run LaTeX on the file showlabels.ins -- this will unpack the style file showlabels.sty amongst other files. Place this somewhere where TeX can find it.

Run LaTeX on the file showlabels.dtx to obtain the documentation.