Re: DOCBOOK: Playing with annotations...

[Dave Pawson <daveP at dpawson dot freeserve dot co dot uk>]

At 01:16 22/08/2002, 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.

<grin/>Oh yes they are. Next release of xep!
Boy do they look good.


>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.

Yep, and the demo's really do look good.



>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,


This is the problem. It will work for some content, but will
look odd for others.

>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.

Text alignment in the vertical direction isn't well supported
for lists.




>> 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.


OK, I did say it was a new term to me.

With the above, I'm shifting my view towards annotations== footnotes,
but them at the bottom of the page.

Regards DaveP