Re: DOCBOOK: Playing with annotations...

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso at arbortext dot com>]

At 09:56 2002 08 20 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
>At the last TC meeting, I took an action to experiment with stylesheet
>support for annotations. Hours before the next TC meeting :-), I've
>finally pushed that action to the top of my list. At
>
>  http://nwalsh.com/annot.zip
>
>you'll find my attempts. I've shown four of five styles that seem like
>obvious possibilities to me. Two independent axes produce four of the
>possibilities: simple or discrete and popup or no-popup.
>
>Consider:
>
><phrase>Hello World<annotation class="note">A common test phrase</annotation></phrase>
>
>Simple display of annotations puts them inline:
>
>  Hello World[<a>Annotation</a>]
>
>Discrete keeps them off the screen by percolating the link up to the
>containing element:
>
>  <a>Hello World</a>
>
>popup uses JavaScript to make hovering over the link popup a window
>containing the annotation. Non-popup doesn't, but uses JavaScript to
>popup a new browser window if the user clicks on it.

The non-popups don't work with my NS 4.72, though they do with IE6.0.

>The fifth possibility is "simple, no-popup" with the actual
>annotations rendered like footnotes at the bottom of the page, instead
>of using a new browser window to display them
>
>One of the reasons for the experiment was to see if it shed light on
>the seven issues that Paul raised[1] when we first started considering
>annotations:
>
>> 1.  In paginated output, should annotations be able to be rendered 
>> as footnotes (e.g., at the bottom of the current page)?  If so, how 
>
>Yes.
>
>> do they interact with footnotes an dother floats? 
>
>I'm tempted to make them footnotes labelled differently and presented
>in the same footnote list as other footnotes, either before all the
>other footnotes or after them.

But not mixed within them, right?  (I think I know what you mean by
"in the same footnote list as other footnotes", but I'm not positive.)


>> What if it is 
>> impossible to get the annotated element and the annotation on the 
>> same page?  Do you allow a long annotation to be broken up over a 
>> page?
>
>Apply the same rules as footnotes.
>
>> What is the formatting style (font, paragraph shape, vertical 
>> spacing before the first one and between subsequent ones, generated 
>> text [e.g., rule] vertically preceding the first one, generated 
>> text/marker horizontally preceding each annotation) of the annotations?  
>
>Where footnotes get labelled "1", "2", "3", etc. I'm tempted to label
>annotations with either their label, if they have one, or "Ann-1",
>"Ann-2", etc.
>
>I would format them in all other respects like footnotes.


Sometimes footnote references (both in the flowing text and at the front
of the footnote content) are superscripted.  If that were the case, would
you also superscript the annotation reference labels?  (That might look odd.)

>> 2.  In paginated output, should annotations be able to be rendered 
>> as end notes, that is, collected and emitted at the end of some 
>> current scoping division?  If so, we have most of the formatting
>> questions raised above.
>
>I think the answer is probably yes, and the same answers apply to the
>formatting questions.

But there are others.  If endnotes, should they start a new page or not?
Should there be a title for the endnotes or not, and if so, what and
how formatted.  If the body of the division is in a two column format,
should the endnotes be in 1 or 2 column format?


>> 7.  If an annotation element is contained within a title, does the
>> copy of the title in the Table of Contents (or List of XXX) also
>> have the annotation? 
>
>No. (IMHO).
>
>> Or if the annotation element is contained
>> within an element, say "year", that is picked up by some XSLT code
>> to be stored and used elsewhere, what happens to the annotation
>> in the copy that was picked up?
>
>I'd say it should be left behind.


I agree, but that won't happen unless the stylesheets are written
carefully with this in mind, right?

paul