Before people agonize too much over how to fix the layout of
"margin-note"s, I'll suggest that it's not just a layout problem...
The ways I use Racket manuals, the "margin-note"s have almost always
been a problem (and would even if they weren't complicating fitting
documentation and code editor windows onto my screen at the same time).
The most common scenario seems to be that the information in the
"margin-note" is actually relevant to the text column -- sometimes even
some of the most important information -- but it's not in the text
column where people are actually reading.
In the scenario that the "margin-note" is for an aside/tangent that
could be would be a distraction from the main text (like a sidebar in a
magazine page layout), the "margin-note"s are too prominent.
In the scenario of making references to academic literature, the
"margin-note" seems like a promising way to format that within a Web
browser page. It would need decreased prominence relative to the main
text, and some unambiguous anchor (e.g., footnote number) to exactly
which bit of text is supported by the footnote. However, I haven't seen
hardly any academic footnotes in the Racket manuals.
Thankfully, Racket manuals have not taken up the old convention of doing
lots of flow-breaking "tip" and "warning" boxes, like used to be more
popular in sold-by-the-pound paper computer books.
The documentation for "http://www.neilvandyke.org/rackonsole/";
demonstrates what I think of "margin-note"s in Racket manuals.
Neil V.
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