[annotator-dev] Google Docs comments

Fri Jun 13 05:29:08 UTC 2014

Hi!

Maybe this is already known, but I just today found that Google has
Google Drive API which allows apps to interact with files in Google
Drive (and Google Docs). What is interesting that they provide also
API for comments on files:

https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/comments

See guide:

https://developers.google.com/drive/web/manage-comments

Interesting part is how they define anchors. They provide the
following anchor types:

- rect - A rectangle in a two dimensional image.
- page - A page number in a pdf or tiff or other document with pages.
- time - A duration of time in a video or other document with a time dimension
- txt - A range of text
- line - A specific line in a text file or any files with lines in it.
- matrix - A location in a matrix-like structure.

It seems all their anchors are quite fragile, but the reason seems
that they always apply only to a particular version of the file. If
file changes, they modify anchors accordingly as well.

Did not find a way to insert a comment with an anchor, just to read
existing ones done inside Google Docs.

But Google also provides Google Docs addons:

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/docs

So maybe Annotator could be packed as a Google Docs addon and provide
annotations made outside Google Docs on the same document also inside.
Maybe that would be of more interest to Hypothes.is.

Mitar

-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
https://twitter.com/mitar_m