[okfn-help] Re: Marginalia performance

Wed Apr 25 10:15:45 BST 2007

Geoffrey Glass wrote:
> 
>> So you mean one format for firefox (which supports XPath) and one for 
>> IE? Hmmm. Let me think about this more and I'll send something on.
> Not exactly - it wouldn't be just any XPath expression, but a 
> straightforward and predictable one.  IE would still use the XPath 
> representation, but it would have to be processed by the Javascript 

Nice idea.

> code.  I prefer to use XPath as the authoritative representation because 
> it is a) presumably faster when supported, b) a standard, and c) easier 
> to read (e.g. when debugging).  The other representation only adds 

Completely. You definitely want a single authoritative representation is 
the right way to go.

> ordering information used for sorting annotations when the annotated 
> document is not available (e.g. on the server, or on a summary page as 
> in Moodle).

The other representation being what you have currently (which was post 
ids if I have understood correctly). So to summarize:

Current scheme:

Quote Location:
   url: base-url-to-resource#anchor-id
   quote: start end

where start/end = word-num.character-num

New scheme:

Quote Location:
   url: base-url-to-resource
   quote: start end

start/end: xpath-expression

~rufus