Re: Feedback on Annotations draft.

On 6/5/07, Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com> wrote:
>
> Since I don't actually have to code anything - I'll continue to put my
> two cents in ;).
>
> The two most used comment & review workflows in use today are MSWord
> and Acrobat/PDF. I recommend that you look at BOTH for ideas and
> concepts (though you have indeed reflected some already in the wiki).
> In the case of Acrobat, look at the Comments pane for some good ideas
> as well as the "Summarize Comments" feature.
>
> A couple of things that strike me offhand.
>
> * You need at least 4 types of "annotations" - popup note (a
> non-anchored/floating note), hilite ("yellow" hilite marker),
> strikeout and insertion. These are the most common types of
> operations performed. You could also do a specific "replacement", but
> that can be simulated just fine with a combination of strikeout +
> insertion.
>
> * Each annotation type MUST allow for associated descriptive text to
> explain why the operation was performed or the text in question (for
> popups & insertions).

All that goes pretty much exclusively in the direction of annotation
as a revisioning tool -- granted that's probably the most prominent
application. Still, I'm wondering how feasible it would be to develop
annotations "standalone" first, i.e. allowing for adding, modifying
and deleting them manually. After all the SoC project is on a rather
tight schedule and annotations may also be of other uses, e.g. in an
educational context, e.g. when studying electronic documents and
adding notes.

Revision support can be hooked up later of course, but i think most of
the infrastructure for the actual annotations can be developed
independently first.

- Rob
Received on Wed Jun 6 10:18:22 2007