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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


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