Replace "sticky notes" with ability to reveal/ignore arbitrary sets of changes (e.g. quotes).

[GoogleCodeExporter]

We currently have two categories of changes: accidental and substantive.

It would be nice to be able to limit the displayed changes (anchors/hot
spots in the text) to one type or another.

A further enhancement would be to subdivide the types of changes.  E.g.,
you could see only the changes in the use of contractions, or commas, or
quotes.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by tantumquantum@gmail.com on 16 Mar 2009 at 12:08

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Comment on the above: one way of "subdividing" the types of changes would be to 
use a
labeling mechanism (much like the labels in this issue tracking system).  To 
begin
with, a change's labels would be intrinsic (hard-coded in the HTML or TEI).  At 
some
point, users might be able to add their own labels to changes.

Expanding on the above, the whole "sticky notes" scheme could be replaced.  It 
has
some deficiencies:

1. Operations are confined to one change or one page at a time -- with the 
exception
of the "clear all" button.

2. You can stick yourself into a corner.  For example, if I make two pages 
sticky,
then un-stick one or two specific notes on the first page, then I can't 
un-stick the
whole first page while keeping the second page sticky.

3. The way it currently works, where clicking on a page toggles the stickiness 
of all
notes on that page that you haven't explicitly toggled before, is a little 
confusing
and difficult to use.

A solution would be to rethink this feature as the "active set" of notes that 
we're
interested in looking at.  We would add a filtering mechanism for adding and
subtracting notes from the active set.  You could add/subtract notes that 
matched any
search criterion.  For example:
  - Add all substantive text changes.
  - Subtract all changes after p. 121 in the CH1859 edition.
  - Add or subtract a specific change by clicking on it.

The active set of notes would be displayed at the right of the browser window
(although see Issue 7).  We'd add a filtering interface where the "clear all" 
button
now is (this will be challenging!).

The existing ability to make notes pop up when you float over the anchors would
become just one way of looking through the notes to decide what to add to / 
subtract
from the "active set."

Original comment by tantumquantum@gmail.com on 21 Mar 2009 at 4:33

• Changed title: Replace "sticky notes" with ability to reveal/ignore arbitrary sets of changes (e.g. quotes).