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Re: Playing with annotations...
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 05:50:41AM -0700, Dave Pawson wrote:
> At 15:35 21/08/2002, Bob Stayton wrote:
>
>
> >Footnotes are annotations, but not all annotations must be
> >footnotes, even in print. I'm hoping the annotation
> >mechanism might be used to put annotations next to
> >paragraphs in a wide page margin. It looks like FO might
> >even handle that using <fo:list-block>.
>
> or float?
Probably not. Side floats are not implemented in
any of the FO processors that I know of, not even XEP.
The XSL-FO area generation for side floats looks quite
complicated in the spec. It seems intended to handle
images intruding into the text, with text wrapping around
it.
I'm more interested in a fixed side margin big enough to
handle text annotations. My approach would be to put all
the normal blocks into the fo:list-item-body part of a
fo:list-item, and reserve its fo:list-item-label for
annotation blocks associated with that normal block. If
the list-item parts have fixed widths, you should get a
regular margin, and the list-item pairing should keep the
annotation near its text. I doubt I'll get line-by-line
alignment, but top-of-paragraph alignment would still
be useful. This is all theortical, since I haven't
actually tried this. But I think the current FO processors
would handle this.
> I've heard the term marginalia, which could be an equivalent
> of annotation?
Yes, this presentation could be referred to as marginalia.
I hesitate to use that term, because, like you, many people
take it as equivalent to annotation. My dictionary defines
marginalia as notes in a book margin. I prefer Paul
Grosso's distinction that marginalia is a presentation mode
of annotation, and that annotations are a logical concept
that can be expressed in many presentation modes.
--
Bob Stayton 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Technical Publications voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc. fax: (831) 429-1887
email: bobs@caldera.com