Hi there.
I'm also confused by the slight disarray of available annotation
solutions out there.
While annotatorjs might be slightly outdated, it still suites my needs
and the documentation is very nice. For me at least it's the best
implementation.
You refer to the ApAnn implementation, but I cannot seem to find any
information about it on the web. Could you please provide a link?
Regards,
Kiffin
On 05/11/2017 05:14 PM, "J. S. Choi" wrote:
This is Joshua Choi; I’m a medical student with an interest in annotation,
particularly in how biomedical annotation may help us physicians make better
clinical decisions. It’s nice to meet you all. What you’re doing is exciting.
During the iAnnotate 2017 hackathon, I discussed documentation with Mr. Young,
Mr. Leeds, and Mr. Knight, and they invited me to make a post to this mailing
list.
I believe that someone should update the documentation of the older annotation
libraries that are related to ApAnn—particularly the ones subsumed by ApAnn.
I’m volunteering to be that someone.
There are numerous scattered older projects and websites related to Apache
Annotator, yet giving out-of-date documentation. They are out of date because
the Hot New, Vibrant, De-Facto-Standard, State-of-the-Art Implementation of
Web/Open Annotations is ApAnn, and yet their documentation does not mention
ApAnn.
These older projects/websites include DOM-Anchor-Text-Quote, DOM-Anchor-Text-Position, DOM-Seek,
DOM-Node-Iterator, Simple-XPath-Position, Hypothesis/H (both readme and Read the Docs), Hypothesis/Client,
Hypothesis/Browser-Extension, OpenAnnotation/Annotator, AnnotatorJS.org <http://annotatorjs.org/>,
OpenAnnotation/Annotator-Wordpress, XPath-Range, AnnotateIt, Annotator-Store, Annotator-TokenAuth,
Annotator-AnnotateIt, http://hypothes.is/contribute/ <http://hypothes.is/contribute/>,
https://www.w3.org/community/openannotation <https://www.w3.org/community/openannotation>,
OpenAnnotation.org <http://openannotation.org/>, and http://openannotation.wordpress.com
<http://openannotation.wordpress.com/>.
What we have here are several disparate yet related projects, any of which
people searching for “annotator”, “web annotation”, or “open annotation” might
encounter at any time. Any of these, at any time, may be giving people their
first impression of the whole web-annotation world. And many of them have been
obsoleted or subsumed, appearing abandoned at a cursory glance. This is
particularly relevant to ApAnn in that it is a new project that subsumes many
other projects—particularly Mr. Leed’s projects and OpenAnnotation’s
Annotator.js.
Annotator.js alone has more than 1800 GitHub stars, underscoring its prominence
and popularity. Any of the thousands of people who encounter Annotator.js may
presume it to be the cutting edge of the open-annotation space. Yet it is
obviously sessile, its last commit being in 2015. Because ApAnn is subsuming
Annotator.js, the latter’s documentation (both readme and website) should be
updated with a message at its beginning. The message might say something like
(but not exactly):
**This library is historical. It has been superseded by [Apache
Annotator](http://annotator.apache.org <http://annotator.apache.org/>).
See [Annotator’s FAQ](link to Robert Knight’s FAQ) for more
information.**
Or, for a library like Hypothesis’ client, this message might be added to the
bottom of its readme:
## Relation to Apache Annotator
This library is for use by a *specific* nonprofit service,
[Hypothesis](http://hypothes.is <http://hypothes.is/>),
as well as anyone using Hypothesis to store webpages. It uses
**[Apache Annotator](http://annotator.apache.org
<http://annotator.apache.org/>)** for its generic
[Web Annotations](https://www.w3.org/community/openannotation/
<https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6156>) functionality.
I believe this is truly important. Most people who will need, use, or help with
ApAnn will appear in the future, and they should be able to clearly and quickly
understand that this is the Hot New and Vibrant Open-Annotation Implementation,
without getting lost in old, abandoned projects as I had been for some time.
Web Annotations might need all the clarity and publicity it can get.
My next step would be to create a Confluence wiki/blog page on the Apache
website with an outline of all the out-of-date documentation. I would then,
during my free time, draft modifications to each out-of-date document.
But before that, if anyone has any broad feedback regarding the plan, let me
know. I plan to get properly started soon.
Looking forward to working with you all,
Joshua Choi
Saint Louis University
--
Kiffin Gish
Gouda, The Netherlands
