[okfn-discuss] web-based text annotation systems

Tue Dec 12 15:52:29 UTC 2006

I've been meaning to write to the list for a while to ask if anyone had 
suggestions for web-based text annotation systems. I'm particularly 
interested in this because I would like to add annotation support to the 
shakespeare texts up on:

   http://demo.openshakespeare.org/

Existing commentary systems I know of are:

1. stet: javascript annotation system used for gpl v3 comments system

   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stet_(software)
   * did not seem designed for external reuse (at least when I last 
looked the README was fairly emphatic that this was very alpha with 
little documentations)

2. commentary: javascript based wsgi middleware developed by ian bicking

   * http://pythonpaste.org/commentary/
   * rather hacked together (apparently he coded it in a week). Had 
problems getting it working locally and no documentation to help in 
adaptation
   * one nice feature is that you don't seem to have to mess with the 
underlying web pages you want to add comments to

3. marginalia: javascript library and spec for adding web annotation to 
pages

   * http://www.geof.net/code/annotation/
   * javascript code seems well factored and understandable and docs are 
good
   * am working on a python port of the REST-annotation storage backend

Does anyone know of any others or have experience using any of these?

Regards,

Rufus