The Annotation Field Module

It's amazing that you noted this, because I was just about to re-install http://drupal.org/project/annotate on a test site and explore changes to it.

For text annotation, I wonder how this module with line up against annotate? I am really looking for something that will emulate functionality of http://www.djangobook.com/en/1.0/chapter03/ (django inline comments) or http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/about/ for drupal, for inline ("folded") text annotation.

The other stuff mentioned on http://drupal.org/project/annotationfield of course looks fantastic.

Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation

Is annotate just like private (or public) log messages per node? We're currently integrating diigo (www.diigo.com) into the workflow for course collaboration between instructional designer and instructor. Not sure what annotationfield will become until a demo's released but I hope it's hovering around this concept cause diigo's pretty insanely powerful when it comes to collaborating on a document.

Well, it's silly to comment too much on what I haven't released :-(
I'm working on putting together something releasable, but I can answer some basic questions.

For text annotations, I'm using the javascript library marginalia. Starting with his old version which supports IE 6. The main thing though is that text annotations are recorded by highlighting specific text (rather than paragraphs).

However, the general framework would also support a paragraph annotation module similar to what I've seen at comment press.

The first alpha release will be quite humble--better UI and discussion group-type features is what I'm working on now.

Right now I am just analyzing annotate_bl and annotationfield/textfield (not yet looked at video or image annotate).

Basically, neither annotate_bl nor annotationfield/textfield are finished or ready for use at this point in their current state, but of course they are not represented to be a release either.

annotate_bl

see screenshot http://www.socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki2/Temp/download/annotatebm.j...

I like the direction this is going in. Annotations become nodes, but also displayed in the overlay window that is present when you click on "block level marker" tab on a node. The form for annotations at this time presents a space to denote the paragraph you wish to annotate, which is mapped by number, and a title and space for annotation. Annotations are then listed above the form. The two markers next to the paragraph are not yet functional at this time.

annotationfield/textfield

screenshot http://www.socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki2/Temp/annotationfieldtext.j...

Basically this one also creates a node as annotation. I like the direction this one is going in, too. Works with code from http://www.geof.net/code/annotation. Although, the function is as of yet incomplete (you click on a tab on an annotatable node, you highlight text, click "grab selection", then fill in your annotation, which then at this point in the modules evolution becomes part of a new node. Now the full text of highlighted node, plus your indistinguishable annotations now become part of a new node.)

Would be cool for this one, if annotations stay with node being annotated. Assuming that will be part of future development. I like the idea of highlighting, and the functionality that is present on http://www.geof.net/code/annotation. I'm evaluating these two modules with some other folks, to consider which we might want to try and pour some labor into. So far annotationfield/textfield seems to be the best looking for us. One of the things we want to explore is the idea of "merging" in content from annotations into a revision of a node. After spending years workign with wikis, and 'refactoring' pages, we think this could be a more natural way for people to first note while reading, but also combine desired changes into work (preferrably without having to edit the whole body of the page). I actually like the highlighting vs. paragraph ("block-level") annotation. Highlighting first of all shows readers exactly where annotation exists with a quick glance. Plus, it allows users to work with specific text content sections. There is more flexibility when you can highlight parts of text exactly. Plus, it could ultimately work with more types of text content (beyond just text content that is sectioned off into paragraphs). Like code, for instance...plus engineering materials, tabled documents that contain text (like parts lists, certain kinds of catalogues, etc) So this could really be useful for a wide swath of people. Thanks for making it!

Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation

I think I/"we" (people working with me) would like to help you, if we can.

"view all the annotations on a node" view is definitely a specific feature that could be immediately useful. Infact, the only thing you are really missing that I can see, to make this module immediately useful is that view on the node, and accompanying interface.

Along the lines of http://groups.drupal.org/node/9510 this was actually a really cool idea http://drupal.org/node/50682 could also be done with revision control like hg (mercurial) which can also "branch" a page, and clone itself entirely. Could be an option for storage and handling of diffs, for those who have heavy revision of text. This is like what we are doing in python with http://dandelion.sheep.art.pl/ (dandelion wiki engine)

Please feel free to contact me directly, or keep us all updated here, let me know what kind of help you need to move forward with text annotation, is some of the burden can be taken off of you, so that you could concentrate on the other included modules. Folks that I am working with are interested in text, image, and video annotation in drupal very much like http://voicethread.com/#home and I will very likely be able to acquire and offer funding for the development of your module(s) later on this year (wanting to work with your license/module so that code can be released under open license and part of Drupal.org community).

In the meantime, please let me know what, if anything we can do to help with text. Thanks!!

Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation

This is an update on the annotationfield module to this community.

Unfortunately, not much work has happened over the last month due to other projects, but I'm coming back to annotationfield for this month.

There is now a demo site, where you can see the current capabilities of the module:
http://drupaldemo.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/

The one significant thing that has been added since I last commented here is that video/images 'highlight' the annotated area in their own respective ways: annotating the time track or a box around the highlighted section. Obviously tons more to do, but this was necessary before all the annotations on a particular object could be shown at once.