annotation

Annotation

Definitions

1. Associations between different pieces of information.¹
2. Extra information associated with a particular point in a document.²

Web Annotation

Definition

Annotations of web documents.

Examples

1. Comments on an Instagram post
2. Amazon reviews
3. Tweets with links

There's a data model for web annotation. The learning platform project in this repository should abide by this model.

Web Annotation Data Model

The model's specification can be found here. This specification "describes a structured model" for annotations to be reused in different platforms. "The specification provides a specific JSON format" (JSON-LD) to enable creation of annotations easily.

An annotation usually includes a body and a target and indicates that the body is related to the target.¹

Example Model Image

The model does not require any specific transfer protocols.* It describes a structure and provides a serialization of the structure.

* There's also an annotation protocol for transfer but this project will not take it into consideration.

Serialization

• @context: The context determines the meaning of the JSON as an Annotation. More than one context is possible but one of the contexts must be "http://www.w3.org/ns/anno.jsonld".
• id: Identity of the Annotation. An Annotation must have an id.
• type: Type of the Annotation. An Annotation must have type(s). One of the types must be the Annotation class (below).
• Annotation: The class for Web Annotations.
• body: The relationship between an Annotation and its Body. Any amount of body relationships can be associated with an Annotation, even 0 (not recommended).
• target: The relationship between an Annotation and its Target. 1 or more target relationships can be associated with an Annotation.

Example Usage of Serialization¹

This is a textual comment on a photo target:

{
  "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/anno.jsonld",
  "id": "http://example.org/anno5",
  "type": "Annotation",
  "body": {
    "type" : "TextualBody",
    "value" : "<p>j'adore !</p>",
    "format" : "text/html",
    "language" : "fr"
  },
  "target": "http://example.org/photo1"
}

References

1. Web Annotation Data Model of W3: https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/
2. Annotation on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annotation
3. JSON-LD: https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/
4. Terminology: https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#terminology