Re: Annotations

[Ralph Ferris <ralph@xxxxxxxx>]

Matthias O. Will wrote:

> I've thought about annotations too. So far, as it seems, it is only
> possible to make annotations to a document as a whole. Wouldn't it be
> a good idea to allow annotations on arbitrary parts of a document, so
> if I have a comment on, say, a paragraph, I can annotate that specific
> paragraph? This would seem much more analogous to the book situation,
> where I would most probably write something on the margin of a page
> or insert a piece of paper between the pages I am commenting on ...

This is indeed a desirable feature and HyTime provides the semantics
for exactly this type of operation. HyTime defines location 
address mechanisms that allow any arbitrary location within
a document, including a single character, to be the anchor of a
link. The location address mechanisms include the means for
defining a location within the document tree (e.g, third paragraph
of the second section in the first chapter) and offsets within
the tree structure that's been located (e.g., words four
through nine). The link elements themselves can be located in 
another document completely separate from the document(s) 
containing the anchors. As a result, the person creating the links does
not need have write permission on the documents containing
the locations being linked to. 

A subset of the linking semantics defined by HyTime is 
supported by SoftQuad's "Panorama Pro." User's can create links
between arbitrary points in a document and add annotations through
a point and click interface. The links so created are written
to an external "web" file. More than one web file can be
created for a document and selectively mounted. Panorama Pro
itself can be launched from a web browser or used independently
with local files. For more information see www.sq.com or the
HyTime Application Development Guide available from TechnoTeacher's
ftp site, as I indicated in my previous message.




Ralph E. Ferris
Project Manager, Electronic Publications
Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. (FOSSI), Engineering Services
Phone: (408) 456-7806 Fax: (408) 456-7050
E-mail: ralph@xxxxxxxx

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