There is an additional problem with annotations, not addressed in Mosaic's
implementation, since
it may be desirable to allow annotations on annotations! I do not believe
that Mosaic does this.
I am aware of some systems which provide support for annotations, though not for
HTML documents -
for example the MUCH system developed by Roy Rada at Liverpool, and designed
for asynchronous local
development of text, does have annotation support.
However, although it might appear that annotations are "simply" a property of
the Browser - the
problem does not end there. The way NCSA have done it is to provide
annotation servers - this then
raises the possibility of different Browsers using the same annotation
server. This would be
beneficial to many users, since there would then be no requirement to adopt a
particular browser
package - for example I could communicate using Mosaic on my Unix system, and
someone else could
annotate my text using Cello on an IBM PC etc.
It seems to me that there is a need for consideration of annotation services,
and how to provide them.
I think this is an issue which needs wider discussion - if it has not had it
already.
Dave
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David Martland, Dept. of Computer Science, Brunel University, United Kingdom
email: David.Martland@brunel.ac.uk
Tel: (+44) 0/895 - 274000 ext 2139 [Overseas callers should suppress
Fax: (+44) 0/895 - 256186 the leading zero of the area code]
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