TEXTUSImport, structure, annotate, read & share

An overview of the TEXTUS project. Early design phase, 15th Feb 2012, Tom Oinn (tom.oinn@okfn.org)

Document Pipeline

Import Read

Share

Add Structure

Annotate

Annotations● Defined as any piece of metadata pertaining

to a section of the text, whether automatically created or manually added by a user

● Location, type and type specific fields○ References back to scanned pages○ Free text comments○ Author, title, edition, publication date and other

bibliographic metadata● Locations stored as character ranges within

text, but rendered with reference to structure

Structure● Heirarchical, initially containing a single root

node corresponding to the entire text● Nodes have type, location and metadata

○ Types determined by type of text○ Location specified as character range

■ Location must be contained by parent location● Shows context when browsing● Translates annotation locations for display

○ e.g. "20665 to 20782" becomes "Section 1 chapter 2 paragraph 12 character 2 to..."

● Incrementally defined - can read and annotate texts before any structure exists

Read● View text in browser or download as PDF,

ebook etc.● View annotations pertaining to currently

visible text○ Filter annotations by annotation metadata

■ Creator, date etc.■ Simple search mechanism to create filters

○ See count of non-visible annotations● Location and annotation visibility

preferences stored on a per-text, per-user basis

Share● Create sets of annotations

○ Sets have identifiers themselves and can be shared○ A set containing other sets copies the contained sets

■ Sets of annotations don't change unless the creator explicitly changes them!

● Provisional annotations○ Mark annotations as 'not validated' - still visible but

flagged as pending approval● Share any location and set of annotations

○ Stable link which can be shared like any other URL

Specialisation● For each document type we define

○ The node types in the structure tree○ The annotation types available

● Storage and server model is the same for all texts

● Front-end presentation may be different to take advantage of type specific structures