[texhax] Annontated glosses?

[Alan Litchfield]

Hi all,

Not sure what I am asking for here, so please forgive me if I use the terms
incorrectly.

I wish to annotate some text in a manner similar to the glosses seen in older,
usually theologial, works. The text is at the centre and the glosses are
arranged around the outside.

I have looked at the margin notes package, but of course that does not
influence the width of the text column. I have looked at the gloss.sty package
but that is for bi-lingual analyses, which is not what I want to do. And of
course, footnotes aren't option because they separate the comments from the
text they are referring to (I want to being them closer to their source).

I hope I have made myself clear :)  If you understand my rambling, is there
such a  package that will achieve this? Or is there a technique I could apply
that does the same kind of thing?

Cheers
Alan