ZAnnot Annotation Server for Zope

Overview

ZAnnot is an annotation server for Zope, allowing clients to add annotations to web pages without editing their source. It uses the Annotea protocol defined by the World Wide Web Consortium and should work with any Annotea compatible client. These include:

• Amaya 6.2 and above
• Mozilla/Netscape with the Annozilla plugin
• IE with the Snufkin extension

although we have only tested it with Amaya and Annozilla.

Installation

Extract the ZAnnot tarfile into the Products directory of your Zope installation, and restart Zope.

Setting up your annotation server

Add an instance of the Annotation Server object somewhere in your Zope site. That's it, you're ready to go! You may want to create accounts for users allowed to post annotations. See the Zope documentation for instructions on how to create and manage users.

For some ideas on how to set up security for ZAnnot, please read about possible security setups

How it works

An annotation client (such as a browser) posts an annotation to the server, giving it:

1) The URL of the page being annotated

2) The location of the annotation in the document (using XPointer)

3) The body of the annotation

ZAnnot stores this in an Annotation object in the Annotation Server folder on your site. Future clients that visit the page can query the annotation server for a list of annotations relevant to that page. The client will usually provide some visual indication that there is an annotation present, giving the user some opportunity to view it.

Feedback

If you have any questions, problems, or suggestions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Enjoy!!!

Copyright 2002, Brent Hendricks ([email protected])

Brent Hendricks
The Connexions Project
Rice University