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List:       quanta-devel
Subject:    Re: [quanta-devel] Annotation support
From:       Eric Laffoon <sequitur () easystreet ! com>
Date:       2005-04-25 9:37:03
Message-ID: 200504250339.54778.sequitur () easystreet ! com
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On Friday 22 April 2005 06:26 pm, Jens Herden wrote:
> Hi Andras,
>
> >  I've talked a little with Eric about annotation support in Quanta.
>
> I have not seen this on the list, so I think this was private. What a pity
> because now I am in the role of the complainer again :-(

I like it when you complain, at least most of the time. ;-) I discussed this 
on the phone with Andras because of time and because all previous attempts to 
discuss this over email had failed to get him to sync with me on this. The 
other option would have been a chat or a whole pile of emails... again.
>
> >  This means you can assign comments to documents (to specific lines in
> > the documents). The comments can be browsed in a new toolview.
>
> What is the difference between annotation and comment? I don't see one.
> Adding comments to a file is not a really new concept, but browsing them
> is.
>
[...]
> >
> > Ideas, comments are welcome. Eric, what do you think? How should we
> > continue? You told me about some kind of integration with team support
> > and event actions, so please explain when you have time.

I have to emerge all this now that I won't be breaking my only system as I'm 
back from the trip to LA. Let me explain again what I discussed on the phone.
>
[...]
This idea started out with Team Project considerations. One thing we wanted to 
do was to be able to message via email on commit or upload but there were 
difficulties... then it occurred to me we could pass messages by having a 
folder with XML files in the repository. The idea is that it would 
automatically manage these files. There would be several advantages too.
1) Tighter integration with web tool
2) No email proliferation or filter issues
3) Ability to link messages to files
4) Annotation possibilities

The idea was simple. Just compose a message and reference a file. To annotate 
would mean placing a coded comment, but in creating an annotation from within 
Quanta this should be auto generated as much as possible. The 
annotation/message file would have XML headers referencing who this was 
visible to by person or Team role, who generated the message and other 
relevent data. It could also be instructed to notify someone on receipt. 
Messages and annotations could be reviewed by filtered indexed lists, 
relative to a page in Quanta or using scripting it could be used on site 
based upon user logins.

As to whether or not it would require Quanta, yes and no. Using Quanta would 
have the system behave in an integrated fashion, however any scriptable 
application that could work with XML could easily be made to interoperate. I 
noted that the W3C based Amaya has annotations they derived, but the concept 
they are using was not adequate to what I had in mind.

As to whether the information should be in the web file or external I think 
it's clear that an external file is a good idea because it is easy to flush 
and because it could possibly carry a lot of data, however internal linking 
seems useful, and certainly a hybrid system could work.

The idea behind this is that this enables functionality not only in Quanta but 
easily in PHP based sites. Uses for this would include...
1) Messaging team members
2) much more fine grained and efficient interactions between team members
3) annotations
4) do list and task management
5) on site client interaction tools

BTW my motivation for this includes the fact that it should be substantially 
more efficient for the type of site specific interaction that everybody has 
to deal with that is not only doing a site for themselves. In addition this 
plugs in as a project management tool that is not generally available in 
commercial programs for web development, yet this is a significant area in 
time usage and the ability to deliver a highly refined product. I think this 
will make a big difference. I hope to be giving interactive feedback shortly.

Eric
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