sidecomments — see review comments in the PDF

A tiny LaTeX package that puts review comments in boxes on both sides of the page, with arrows pointing at the commented phrase, figure, table or equation. Nobody has to open the Overleaf comment panel: compile, and the comments are in the PDF.

Note that the page is made wider, so the venue's layout (line numbers, rulers, columns, page breaks) is left as it is. One option switches everything off for submission.

ARR (ACL)	ICLR	CVPR	AAAI

Tested with the official templates: ACL/ARR acl.sty (review mode), ICLR 2027, the CVPR author kit (review mode), and AAAI-27. It works with any other class too (NeurIPS, ICML, IEEE, plain article), on pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX.

Quick start

1. Copy sidecomments.sty next to your main.tex (on Overleaf: Upload).

2. In the preamble, after the template's style package:

   \usepackage{sidecomments}
   \screviewer{KV}{Khang}{blue}             % defines \KV, \KVnote, \KVbox
   \screviewer{AB}{Reviewer 2}{red!80!black} % one line per person

3. Comment:

   We propose \KV{a simple calibration method}{Name it, and cite the closest work.}.
   
   This needs one extra pass.\ABnote{Missing citation here.}
   
   \begin{figure}[t]\centering
     \ABbox{\includegraphics[width=.9\linewidth]{plot}}{Axis labels are too small.}
     \caption{...}
   \end{figure}
   
   \begin{table}[t]\centering
     \KVbox{\begin{tabular}{lcc} ... \end{tabular}}{Add standard deviations.}
   \end{table}
   
   \begin{equation}
     \KVbox{$\displaystyle L = \sum_i \ell_i$}{Define $\ell_i$.}
   \end{equation}

4. Compile twice (Overleaf and latexmk do this automatically). Arrow positions come from the previous run.

5. Before submitting: \usepackage[final]{sidecomments}. The comments disappear, the page returns to its original size, and the commented text stays.

Commands

For each \screviewer{XY}{Name}{color}:

Command	Use it for
\XY[opts]{phrase}{comment}	Highlights the phrase (it may span lines) and points at it
\XYnote[opts]{comment}	Marks the current position with a caret ("insert something here")
\XYbox[opts]{content}{comment}	Puts a dashed frame around a figure, table, equation or any box

Generic forms that don't need \screviewer: \sccomment, \scnote, \scbox. They take the same arguments, plus reviewer=XY.

Per-comment options (opts):

• left / l, right / r, or side=auto: which margin the box goes in. auto is the default. It picks the margin closer to the target, so a two-column paper gets left-column comments on the left and right-column comments on the right.
• color=green!60!black: override the reviewer's colour for one comment.
• name=Reply: override the name shown in the box header.

The comment text can hold any LaTeX: math, \emph, \ref, \cite, several paragraphs.

Package options

\usepackage[width=6cm, sides=right]{sidecomments}

Option	Default	Meaning
final (or hide)	off	Hide all comments, keep the original page size
width	5.5cm	Width of each extra margin
sides	both	both, left or right; with one side, every comment goes there
pad	0.3cm	Space between the boxes and the edge of the extra margin
gap	4pt	Vertical space between stacked boxes
font	\footnotesize\sffamily	Font of the comment boxes

These can also be set later in the preamble with \scsetup{width=6cm}.

How it works

• At \begin{document} the paper is widened by width on each side and the content is moved over with \hoffset. Nothing inside the text area moves.
• Each comment saves the position of its target with zref-savepos.
• While each page ships out, the package collects that page's comments, sorts them top to bottom, and stacks them per side. Boxes start level with their target and get pushed down (or up near the page bottom) so they never overlap. It then draws the boxes, the arrows (under the text) and the highlights with TikZ.

Examples

examples/<venue>/main.tex is a short mock paper with comments on text, a figure, a table and an equation, built on the official style files.

make            # build all four demos (needs latexmk)
make arr        # just one
make zips       # dist/<venue>.zip: self-contained, ready for Overleaf "Upload Project"
make clean

Limitations

• The first compile shows no comments; they appear on the second run.
• A highlight that crosses a page or column break is only highlighted up to the break. The arrow still points at its start.
• If a page has more comments than fit in the margin height, boxes overlap and a warning is written to the log. Use sides=both, a wider width, or shorter comments.
• Comments in a \caption or a \section title are left out of the list of figures and the table of contents. A comment in a section title would also show up in running heads, so put it next to the title instead.
• The AAAI and other camera-ready checkers expect the original page size: always submit with [final], or with the package removed.

Author

Khang Vo, MBZUAI (@nhatkhangcs)

Released under the MIT License.

Acknowledgement

Inspired by labreview.sty from the SPOT AI Lab.