[okfn-discuss] web-based text annotation systems

Fri Dec 15 09:26:28 UTC 2006

Simon Roe wrote:
> Hi Rufus,
> 
> I don't know of any others, but I am looking for more or less the same
> thing.  I'd be really interested in hearing more about what you find
> out.

I've been working on adapting the marginalia solution (which seems the 
most polished and the most documented) to python. I've put my work so 
far in the shakespeare subversion repository at:

   http://project.knowledgeforge.net/shakespeare/svn/sandbox/annotater/

> I don't like javascript only systems though - and I think they should
> be avoided if they don't break well when javascript isn't use.

I agree and one of the nice things about the marginalia setup is that we 
can separate the annotation service (i.e. what stores the annotations) 
from the frontend where annotations are added. That way if you don't 
like javascript you can replace it with whatever system you want (a 
little textbox, a sidebar etc etc).

> Julian was thinking about a system where the user copies some text in
> to an input field and comments in an input field below it.  Then the
> first match of that string is highlighted or marked in whatever way
> you want.

Sounds promising and gets rid of all the hacks needed to get a range 
from the browser in a way that is cross-browser compatible. One problem 
that I can think of is where you highlight short ranges (e.g. someone 
justs wants to add a note to a few words) when you could get a lot of 
ambiguity.

Regards,

Rufus