[humanities-dev] Possible extensions of Textus; Looking for collaborators

Wed Feb 20 18:26:03 UTC 2013

Abel,

A fellow Boston-ite!  There is a small OKFN-boston group and mailing
list<https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/okfn-boston>.
 The group members thus far also seem to be interested in annotation.

--Seth

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Abel Corver
<acorver at college.harvard.edu>wrote:

> Dear Sam,
>
> Thanks! Unfortunately I couldn't make 5pm GMT (I'm in Boston), but I'll
> try to make it next week. Thanks for inviting me!
>
> I'm currently focusing on integration with content hosted on other
> websites (inspired by thepund.it, but less versatile and focused more on
> linking/annotating). A screenshot:
> http://abelcorver.com/files/emails/ibtp_screenshot_20022013.png
>
> I could transform this toolbar to be a more generic Textus toolbar. The
> way I imagine it is that documents could be displayed in the Textus
> interface when possible (e.g. text format, pdf format), but that the
> toolbar would appear when the user navigates to an external webpage
>
> A couple of questions:
>
> (1) Do you think we could merge the functionality I have in mind with
> Textus, or would I only be building things "on top"?
>
> (2) Right now comments are displayed in the right sidebar. Is there any
> chance we could restructure the code not to need a sidebar div, but instead
> to allow annotations to "float" on the right or left side of the screen?
> This would enable the use of this system on external webpages and make the
> system more versatile.
>
> (3) Could the current comment system be migrated to AnnotateIt.org, which
> I'm currently using? The only thing that it is lacking right now is the
> ability to annotate "overlapping" pieces of text, but adding this
> functionality would be a valuable addition. It already has a great plugin
> system, so it should be easy to extend it to support source-to-source
> linking.
>
> (4) These questions all amount to the same idea - and please tell me what
> you think: I think it would be great if the two functionalities of Textus -
> storing texts & facilitating discussion - could be separated. Projects like
> <http://openlibrary.org/> already hosts a lot of sources, so if we could
> make the Textus interface run 'on top of' such services - e.g. with a
> toolbar - which would expand the user base enormously.
>
> Another thing that Textus provides is structured metadata about internet
> resources - currently stored on the Textus server, but I imagine it could
> come from other places like OpenLibrary. E.g. OpenLibrary already does this
> for their own sources, but content hosted on individual webpages, say
> UN.org, are not indexed. Textus could maintain a database of metadata -
> title, author, etc - on all these different sources.
>
> I think these changes retain the basis of Textus, while focusing its
> qualities on the places where there are currently no other services. I'm
> curious to hear what you think.
>
> I'm really excited about the project! Can't wait to talk to you next week!
>
> Best,
> Abel.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Sam Leon <sam.leon at okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear Abel,
>>
>> Wow this is so exciting!
>>
>> I'm sure many of the features that you mention above could be built on
>> top of the existing TEXTUS codebase. If you haven't already do check out
>> the TEXTUS documentation:
>> https://github.com/OpenHumanities/textus/tree/master/docs
>>
>> It would be great to discuss your ideas further on our weekly Open
>> Humanities Hangout. There are often devs there working on similar projects
>> who should be able to help you and get to grips with the feasibility of
>> building what you want on top of TEXTUS.
>>
>> The Hangouts take place virtually at 5pm GMT every Wednesday.
>>
>> Does that sound like something you would be able to join?
>>
>> All the best,
>> Sam
>>
>>
>> On 14 February 2013 19:50, Abel Corver <acorver at college.harvard.edu>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> For some time I've been working on an online project that will allow
>>> people to collaboratively research sources relating to government policies,
>>> as well as related documents. These sources could range from UN
>>> resolutions, ICJ decisions, World Bank reports, government legislative
>>> records, etcetera. Furthermore, all annotations, highlights, etc., will be
>>> open to all other viewers.
>>>
>>> The system will support highlighting, annotation, but most importantly
>>> the linking of 'evidence' in source A - e.g. a report by the Congressional
>>> Research Service - to a 'claim' in source B - e.g. a speech by a
>>> politician. Other viewers will be able to vote on the quality of these
>>> 'links'.
>>>
>>> A new visitor of the website will thus get a good picture of the
>>> accuracy of certain sources, and can easily access the 'supporting' sources
>>> if he/she is interested.
>>>
>>> Until now I was unaware of Textus, and I'm excited that there seems to
>>> be a lot of overlap with my project. A number of things that I would be
>>> interested in adding are:
>>>
>>> - Support for source formats other than text, i.e. PDF (I'm already
>>> working on a free pdf-to-html conversion server), HTML, Audio, Video
>>>
>>> - Automatic indexing and conversion of large databases of documents and
>>> reports from governments, international organizations like the UN, Red
>>> Cross, IMF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, news articles,
>>> public books (e.g. Google Books, Gutenberg), etc.
>>>
>>> - a voting and search mechanism to prevent an overload of links &
>>> annotations for the user.
>>>
>>> - support for news articles, and possibly integration with the browser
>>> so that if a user visits a news website, annotations are automatically
>>> displayed.
>>>
>>> Could these features be built on top of Textus? Or would it be more
>>> appropriate to make this into a completely seperate platform?
>>>
>>> Are any of you interested in participating?
>>>
>>> I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Abel Corver.
>>>
>>> P.S. A work-in-progress wiki can be found here:
>>> http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~ibtp/devwiki/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> humanities-dev at lists.okfn.org
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sam Leon
>> Project Manager
>> Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://okfn.org/
>> Skype: samedleon
>>
>
>
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