[sugar] Annotation (was Re: Viewing PDFs from Browse)

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Disclaimer:  the following is a somewhat off-topic metacomment:

> ... I do not know what you mean by 'works best'.  Most remote
> annotation occurs offline and is never aggregated, but works just fine
> for the production of notes for one's personal journal.  We would be
> better off if there were a ready way for noters to smoothly aggregate
> and share such notes, but smooth doesn't mean instantaneous; it would
> be enough for annotations to aggregate smoothly with an asynchronous
> network with effective latencies in months.

This is a beautiful idea -- but I do not know how achievable.

My own method of learning a not-too-big topic (e.g., "what all needs 
to be put into a subdirectory of /home/olpc/Activities/ ?") is to 
make up a 'Cheat Sheet' that lists (and tersely describes) all the 
pertinent elements.  [This definitely is "remote annotation".]

But when it comes to "aggregating" what I've done, the best that I 
can think of would be to send out a copy of my 'Cheat Sheet' to 
someone trying to figure out the same topic.  Then if the recipient 
can decipher my style and remarks, "sharing" will have occurred.

[It would do me no good to send my 'Cheat Sheet' to the original 
author - what I've made up is an 'extract', not an 'addendum'.]


An example of a means to "fill in" information is XML.  Maybe we 
should wish for a genius to make up an XML 'Annotation Template' -- 
which though independently filled in by multiple commentators about 
a given Work, could then be "merged smoothly" to produce either a 
stand-alone adjunct to the original Work, or actually be aggregated 
with the original Work to produce a new version of that Work.


mikus