> I'd double down on my assumption that these complex, nonstandard noting and organization methods are done almost entirely manually,. probably in something not far removed from LaTex or very specialized niche editors, probably with support of many, many bits of automation like scripts and macros and hard-coded formatting tools.
I disagree, James. The screenshot shows a title I set about ten years ago. Parallel texts (English on the left, Latin on the right), about 1,300 pages. Up to three levels of notes (not counting the margin notes). The first level I did as InDesign footnotes, the two other levels were in their own stories. Short notes were done as run-in notes.
InDesign was perfectly up to the job, virtually everything was done with a few scripts. Many typesetters can write scripts themselves, and script writers can be hired. So there's no need to go to Latex (which would be able to deal with layouts such as these, and which is harder to script than InDesign) or any other tool.
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